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A straightforward reading implies no such thing. Go out in a desert or on a high mountain and the horizon appears to make a circle--the circle of the earth. (It isn't a true circle, because for it to be a circle, the surface would have to be perfectly smooth, and the earth a sphere. Obviously, the surface has varying heights, and the Earth itself is an imperfect oblong spheroid.) Nothing about the word "circle" (in English or Hebrew) denotes a spherical shape, because a circle is, by definition, a two-dimensional object.

I disagree with you completely. A sphere is circular, so the verbiage, whatever one might believe people thought, is accurate. The paintings and drawings I have seen show the earth as a flat plane where a ship will fall off of the edge.

Flat Earther's thought Columbus would sail off the edge of the earth, which was always depicted with a straight edge as if the earth was a table top. I have never seen the earth described or depicted as a pancake.

A person examining the curvature of the earth would reason that it is a sphere. The shadow cast on the moon would also help a person reason that it is a sphere, for if a person were standing on a pancake that made a circular shadow on the moon, they would fear falling off with the syrup.

I disagree with you completely.

Of course you do. From what I can gather from your posts, you have an a priori assumption that the Bible is literally true in all respects. That assumption, however, is wrong.

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A sphere is circular, so the verbiage, whatever one might believe people thought, is accurate.

No it isn't. A sphere is spherical. A circle is circular. A sphere is three dimensional, a circle is two dimensional. So the verbiage is wholly and fully inaccurate.

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The paintings and drawings I have seen show the earth as a flat plane where a ship will fall off of the edge.

I've seen cartoons where rabbits and ducks talk. So what? Take issue with the people who made those paintings and drawings. The particular drawing you've seen is irrelevant.

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Again, you appear to be assuming that what has been presented in a comic version of history bears any resemblance to the real thing. (No one but illiterate peasants [few of whom would have known of Colubus's voyage] thought the Earth was flat in the 1490s.)

More to the point, the Bible provides greater support, literally, to the notion that the Earth is a flat plate (whether circular or square), firmly affixed, than an irregular oblong spheroid orbiting the sun. See, e.g., references to the Earth being set on pillars, that it is immovable, references to the "four corners" of the Earth and to the "ends of the Earth", Jesus being shown all the kingdoms of the Earth from an exceptionally high mountain.

Compare that to the number of clear statements of the true shape of the Earth: zero, none, nada. There is none. The best you can do is to spin "circle." Well, even that is more descriptive of a circular plate than an oblong spheroid.

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A person examining the curvature of the earth would reason that it is a sphere.

Yet nowhere in the Bible is this "reasoning" set out. Clearly, then, at least in terms of the bible, the people who wrote it did not reason it to be so. * * *

The shadow cast on the moon would also help a person reason that it is a sphere,

Actually, it reinforces the idea that it is a circular plate, as that would cast a circular shadow on the Moon. (Providing that the society understood that eclipses were, in fact, the shadow of the Earth on the Moon, which most did not.)