Hi Marshall, always great questions. What I do when I face something like ‘doors’ in that context I don’t throw up my hands and say it is insolvable. I learned in 47 years of looking for oil that when we had a problem and an employee threw up his hands and said it was insolvable, the problem would never be solved because he wouldn’t even try! Can I say I can answer every question? No.
What I do next is go see what the word ‘door’ means to see how the translator chose that particular English word. Clearly this passage is challenging Job’s arrogance and his knowledge. It is also using figurative language, but I still think this figurative language has truth to it,
The words ‘door’ and ‘bar’ are used of the sea, not the earth. I think the passage is asking Job if he knows why the sea water is trapped where it is. The word delet, is translated once as ‘lid’ and ‘bars’ has one definition; a fortress, of the earth as a prison And the word ‘shut up’ means 'hedged in" so the passage could be translated as
Or who **hedged in** the sea with **a lid**,
When it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb?
9 When I made the cloud the garment thereof,
And thick darkness a swaddling band for it,
10 And brake up for it my decreed place,
And set **a prison** and **lids**,
11 And said, **Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further:**
** And here shall thy proud waves be stayed?**
Verse 11 really shows the context here. He is asking job what keeps the waters where they are, so the translation should match the context. What is above, is actually true.
Of the foundation of the earth, have you never heard of the earth’s core? As to measuring it, if the earth were bigger, we would have a different atmosphere, and life would not be like it is. Iff the earth were smaller, we would have much less atmosphere and life would be non-existant. Our earth, whenyou look at it from a physics perspective is pretty well suited to mobile life forms. ON a bigger earth the bones must increase by the square of the radius to support gravitational weight. etc. Loads of issues if the earth were not measured properly when God caused it to be formed.
Edited much later to add: 2 of my scientific papers were on the Earth’s gravitational field. The water is capped by the equipotential surface of the gravitational potential. That is why it can’t rise up out of the sea to flood the continents. So, the water is in a prison with gravity holding it from going up too far above the mean sea level. and it is held in prison laterally by the continents. Thus I don’t see anything unscientific about this verse. Here is my paper. I think I have the full pdf on Researchgate