For thousands of years up to about two hundred years ago, humanity believed that the Earth was stationary and did not move, and that the sun and the rest of the universe were moving around the Earth, and the geocentric theory was dominant. In recent centuries, Galileo and Copernicus made efforts to refute these theories, which were usually met with suppression by the Church. However, in the past century, with the advancement of astronomy and cosmology tools, humanity has realized that the Earth has two types of motion: rotational motion (i.e., the Earth’s movement around itself) and orbital motion (i.e., the Earth’s movement around the Sun). In this writing and examination of the verse, the type of motion is not examined; however, the Holy Quran, 1400 years ago, in Surah Taha, likened the Earth to a cradle:
Who has made the earth a bed for you, and has inserted pathways for you therein and sent down from the sky rain and We brought forth thereby, of varying colors, all kinds of plants. [From Sahih International translation via Quran.com]
Likening the Earth to a cradle by Almighty God also indicates that it is not in a state of stillness and that the Earth is in motion. If the Earth were stationary, the Holy Quran could have likened it to a bowl.
Until quite recently, children’s cradles were usually made in a way that had a semi-circular and swinging motion and did not have stillness; this also helped in cooling the child, and the child moved from one side of the cradle to the other.
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