What was the firmament in the Bible?

The Hebrew word translated “firmament” would be better given as “expanse,” as it is marked in the reference column in some editions of our Bibles. The word, “firmament” comes from the Vulgate translation of the Bible in Latin by Jerome, and is unfortunate. The idea came to him from the ancients. Greek and Roman philosophies described heaven as forming a solid vault over the earth. Aristotle’s (B.C. 384-322) description was “a sphere studded with stars.” The little girl, who imagined the stars were gimlet holes let into the floor of heaven through which the glory of heaven shone, was not far removed from the learned philosopher in her ideas.

The meaning of the passage is plain. Up to now the chaotic earth was enswathed in water and enwrapt in darkness. Then God took in hand to reconstruct the earth. He decreed that there should not only be water on the earth, but by evaporation there should be water in the skies in the form of clouds. There was to be water below the expanse, that is on the earth; and water above the expanse, that is as seen in the clouds in the sky.

Assuredly this renewal was no matter of a long age of gradual process, but a work to which God assigned a separate day, though to Him abstractedly a moment had sufficed. As it is, man's attention was impressively drawn to His considerate and almighty goodness Who then separated "waters from waters," which otherwise had filled space above the earth with continual vapour and without that due mixture of gases which constitutes the air essential to all life on the globe. To its machinery with other causes by divine constitution we owe the formation of clouds and the fall of rain as well as evaporation; to its refractive and reflective powers, that modification of light which adds incalculably to beauty no less than to the utility of the creation: a black sky had otherwise cast its constant pall over the earth. Even had dry land by another fiat been disengaged from the waters, without this encompassing elastic fluid, vapours would not have been absorbed nor have fallen as now; dew had ceased; fountains and rivers if formed had wasted away; water had enormously prevailed; and if dry land had survived anywhere, it must have been a dry arid waste with neither animal life nor a blade of grass. But enough; these are not the pages in which to seek the physical methods of creative beneficence.

It is now generally known, as it had long been laid down by the most competent Hebraists before modern science existed, that "expanse" is the real force of the original word, instead of "firmament" which came to us through the Latin Vulgate, as it seems due to the Greek Septuagint. Possibly these Jewish translators in the days of Ptolemy Philadelphus may have succumbed here as elsewhere to Gentile ideas or at least phrases. And a great Rabbinical scholar, a Christian teacher, has given his opinion that the Greek version employs the word (στερέωμα) in the sense of an ethereal or fine subtle orb, and in no way of a solid permanent vault as rationalists love to assume, basing it on etymology and figurative usage. The aim is obvious, the wish father to the thought. Excluding God from the written word as from creation, deifying nature and exalting fallen man (more especially of the nineteenth century), they gladly depreciate the text by citing "windows" and "doors," "pillars" and "foundations" as if meant literally. Now the usage of the word even in the chapter itself (vers. 15, 17, 20, 28) sufficiently proves that the word conveys the idea of the open transparent sky, whatever may have been the misunderstanding of the reader at any given time.

Hence it may be noted that the Authorised and Revised English Versions give "the air" as the equivalent of "the heavens" in ver. 28 as elsewhere. It is really the expanse, including the atmospheric heavens in the lower part of which birds fly. A solid vault is out of the question. The true derivation seems rather from a word expressing elevation, like the source of our own "heaven"; but even if drawn from the idea of beating or hammering out, who knows not that words may and do acquire a force etherealised according to the object designated, wholly above their material origin? The scriptures really present the heavens as spread out, and the earth hung upon nothing, nowhere giving countenance to the grossness of the stars fastened like brass nails on a metallic vault. Sceptical ill-will likes that it should seem so; but it is unworthy slander. Even Dathe who was free enough gives "spatium extensum," as did learned Jews generally long before and since.

"The waters above" consist of that enormous supply of vapour which fills the clouds and falls as rain, hail, or snow. "The waters below" covered the earth as yet, but were shortly to form seas, when the dry land appeared next day. It is ignorance therefore to say, in the face of a crowd of scriptures, that the waters above imply a permanent solid vault like a shower bath. The Hebrews could see the movements of many heavenly bodies instead of regarding all as fixtures. But even had they been as dull as rationalism is invidious, our concern is with the divine record, the accuracy of which irritates hostile minds who would hail the least flaw with satisfaction. Scripture abides; science changes and corrects itself from age to age. As to figures, "bottles" are used no less than "pillars," and a "tent" or "curtain" as well as "windows" and "doors." They are all strikingly expressive. Only the stupid or malicious could take any of them in the letter, to dishonour the scriptures.

The Hebrew word is raqia, signifying 'expanse.' It is used for the celestial sphere that may be seen by looking upward, and also simply for the atmosphere in which the birds fly. We read that God called the firmament 'heaven:' this is 'heaven' in a broad sense as we read elsewhere of 'the stars of heaven,' but also of 'the birds of heaven.' Gen. 1:6-20. The Psalmist speaks of them as distinct: "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handywork." Ps. 19:1; Ps. 150:1. The living creatures in Ezek. 1 move amidst the firmament: "and the likeness of the firmament upon the heads of the living creature was as the colour of the terrible crystal, stretched forth over their heads above" (Ezek. 1:22), showing them to be executors of God's judicial government: cf. Ezek. 10:1.

Now God speaks to introduce a firmament to divide waters from waters (vs.6-7), those waters under the firmament from those above. He called the firmament heaven. This heaven is plainly the atmospheric heaven, and the waters above are no doubt those contained in the clouds. They are fresh, pure waters: those beneath are salty, unfit for human consumption. If the first day symbolizes God's beginning His work in a soul by new birth, the second day illustrates the fact that one has cause to look up to recognize that true blessing comes from above, and therefore that authority also is from above. "The heavens do rule" (Dan.4:26). How important for the believer to learn early that he is to be in subjection to the authority of the Lord Jesus. If all below seems to be a watery waste with no order, yet in being refreshed by the pure water of God's word from above in true subjection to the Lord Jesus, the believers life may be greatly changed from disorder into calm, orderly obedience, even when surrounded by the swelling seas of the world's confusion.

Then the world had light, but it was still waste, and covered with water. God said: "Let there be a firmament" (air) "in the midst of the waters" to divide the waters into the upper clouds and lower seas. God called the air "Heaven", and we call it the sky. There was evening and there was morning, the second day. The water in the upper part we call clouds. The lower part is called Seas, Rivers, Lakes, and Ponds. As God divided the light from the darkness, so now He divided what was below from what was above, as God always divides good from bad. People do not do that. God tells those who call Him Lord, to go away from what is bad. (2 Tim. 2:19). God said: "Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear." God called this land 'Earth' and the mass of waters, 'Sea.' God saw that it was good. God said that grass should come on the earth, and vegetables that have seeds, and also fruit trees, and it was so. God saw that this was good; there was evening and morning, — the third day.

On the second day a "firmament," or "expanse," was called into being. As a result of this a further division took place; not now of light from darkness but of waters from waters. God called this expanse, Heaven. In verse 1 "the heaven" indicates what we should call the stellar heavens. In verse 8 the atmospheric heavens are indicated. There it is that immense quantities of water float above in the form of clouds, divided from the far greater quantities that lie on the earth beneath. As the result of the work of the second day the earth was surrounded with an atmosphere. It was accomplished by His word, "God said … and it was so."

Second Day — The Firmament, or expanse, is here seen, which spreads between the earth-heavens and the waters beneath. As yet, nothing is upon the surface of the world except the waters covering all. God makes a division now between these waters and the vapors above. There is marked distinction between them. The waters upon the earth are the salt, bitter waters of the ocean; while those above, though drawn from the ocean, are perfectly fresh. It is beautiful to see how these waters in vast and inconceivable volume are suspended in those "balancing clouds" which lift them above the earth and yet hold them in connection with it, ever ready to pour down in beneficent rain the treasures which they hold. Science here again has ceased to sneer at the wondrous exactness and beauty of all this. It is a true picture of what the expanse of the atmosphere is, a separation between the waters on the earth and in the heavens, not a hard and fast line; indeed, one that can be filled, it may be, with vapor, and yet which in general arches itself above us, making a true separation, as Scripture here describes it.

107 Then the expanse is formed, or for a Jew the first heaven, as we see it. God set it over the earth. It is spoken of as we speak of it. Rakiang is an expanse, but there is no definition of it. Firmament is merely a word taken from the Septuagint and Latin. God produced what we see daily, this blue sky over our heads, and call sky, and heaven. It is not mere empty space, as our Essayist says: all but what the sun shone on would be pitch dark if it were, and the bottom viewed in a telescope is black. It is the air which is blue, yet we all say blue sky, and so on. It sufficed to say, that what was thus before us God had so ordered.

The second stage of this divine work is the making of the "firmament," or "expanse," by which a separation of the waters is effected. Strangely misunderstood as it has been by some, it is, one would think, self-evidently, the formation of the atmospheric "heavens," which draw up now (as they have been doing ever since) out of the deep below, waters which, purged of their saltness, become the still inexplicably balanced clouds.

"The firmament" is the expanse. God made a heaven, so to speak, to this earth.