I had a discussion once with an Islamic guy who claimed that this proved the superiority of the Koran over the Bible.
His point was that the earth is not quite a perfect sphere - it bulges by a statistically small amount at the equator because of centrifugal forces.
His brilliant logic - the bible says "circle", but the Koran says "egg". Yes, EGG. No matter that the earth is nowhere NEAR egg-shaped. Far closer, in reality to a sphere.
I cannot say I was very polite about this - I had just about had all I could stand of his smart-ass smugness.
BTW - I agree that this historically was not a reference to a 3-D spherical earth.