What are The Ends of the Earth?
Psalm 135:7, Job 37:3, and Daniel 4:11 reference “the ends of the earth.” Another way of saying the “ends of the earth” is to refer to the “extremities of the earth.” In this case, as is also the case for “the four corners of the earth,” the word “earth” refers to the land mass, country, or continents, as opposed to the globe (Exodus 10:12-15). Since the word “earth” can be used as synonymous with “land,” the “ends of the earth” thus refer to the points of land most distant from some a central point.
For the Bible, this central point is the land of Israel. On a globe, a great circle passing through Jerusalem and the north and south poles very nearly cuts the Pacific Ocean in half and leaves four continental “corners” or “ends,” namely the Chukchi Peninsula of the Soviet Union (opposite the Bering Straits of Alaska), Alaska, the southeastern tip of Australia, and the Cape Horn of South America. These four geographical locations can account for the four corners of the earth. Alternatively, since there was probably a land-link between Siberia and Alaska at the time the Bible was written, the four corners of the earth could be Norway, Newfoundland, Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope.