What does the Hebrew word chug mean in Isaiah 40:22?
Robert Sungenis answers that chug means circle or roundness, not a disc, which has depth, nor strictly a sphere, since biblical Hebrew had no word for one. He accepts the Douay-Rheims rendering "globe" as the verse's intent, and holds that the Hebrew words for the Earth taken together most likely mean a sphere, though chug alone proves neither shape.
What does the Hebrew word chug mean in Isaiah 40:22?
Answer
Chug means "circle" or "roundness." It does not mean "disc," and on its own it does not mean "sphere," because biblical Hebrew had no word for sphere. Isaiah 40:22 says God "sits above the circle (chug) of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers." Flat-earthers read chug as a disc. That fails, because a disc has depth and a circle is two-dimensional. Others treat chug as a technical word for "sphere." It is not. Chug is more general than that. The reason is the language. Biblical Hebrew had about 8,000 words. Greek had more than 100,000, with a far more complex grammar, and you can keep making new words in Greek. Hebrew had no word for sphere, triangle, octagon, or oval. It did not even have a word for "uncle"; you said "your father's brother." So placing the full weight of a geometric claim on one Hebrew word asks more than the language can carry. That does not leave the verse neutral. The Douay-Rheims translates chug as "globe." Strictly speaking, the word does not mean globe, but I will not fault the translators, because globe is the intent of the verse. When you study all the Hebrew words Scripture uses about the Earth, the most likely meaning is a sphere. Chug by itself cannot prove it, and it cannot prove a flat Earth.