₂And I saw the corner-stone of the earth: I saw the four winds which bear the earth and the firmament of the heaven. ₁ I saw the treasuries of all the winds: I saw how He had furnished with them the whole creation and the firm foundations of the earth. The Lord is looking down from heaven he sees all the sons of men Psalm 33:13.įor thus the LORD has told me, “I will look from My dwelling place quietly Like dazzling heat in the sunshine, Like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.” Isaiah 18:4įurther we read in the extra-biblical text 1 Enoch the following description of what Enoch saw in his heavenly encounter: God looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek God. I discussed in my last post how where YHWH is positioned on His throne gives Him a good vantage point to observe all humankind as we read in these verses: We have a caring Father who spreads his wings over us so that we can nestle under His protection we have a caring YHWH who places His firmament over the earth to keep us safe inside His creation. ₅You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, ₆nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday. ₄ He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart. The image we can envision here is very much the picture which is painted by the psalmist in Psalm 91: In the passage from Genesis above, we read about how YHWH made the firmament to cover the earth and protect it from the waters (He divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament) and He called the firmament Heaven. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day. So the evening and the morning were the second day… 31 Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. Genesis1 v 6-8 reads:Ħ Then God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” 7 Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament and it was so. Genesis 7:11 mentions these windows, stating, “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.I have written a few posts which mention the firmament or the dome or the raqia which YHWH placed above the earth as described in Genesis, and it is time for us to explore this further. The water for rain, snow, hail, etc., was stored outside the raki’a, which had "windows" to release them onto the earth. According to Genesis 1:8, God called the firmament Heaven, giving it significance beyond just the border between the earth and beyond.Īccording to biblical cosmology, the firmament, seen as the sky from Earth, is essentially a fixed upside-down container over the Earth, colored blue from the heavenly waters above it. As part of the cosmic design, the firmament is the formation above the atmosphere of Earth, understood as an immense stable arch. In the story of creation, as found in Genesis, God formed the firmament to divide the "waters above" the earth from the "waters below" the earth. The “firmament” is mentioned 15 times in the King James Version of the Bible and refers to the expanse of the heavens above the earth. It was the support also of the heavenly bodies ( Genesis 1:14) and is spoken of as having "windows" and "doors" ( Genesis 7:11 Isaiah 24:18 Malachi 3:10) through which the rain and snow might descend. The raki'a supported the upper reservoir ( Psalms 148:4). It formed a division between the waters above and the waters below ( Genesis 1:7). It is plain that it was used to denote solidity and expansion. The language of Scripture is not scientific but popular, and hence we read of the sun rising and setting, and also here the use of this particular word. They who rendered raki'a by firmamentum regarded it as a solid body. This word means simply "expansion." It denotes the space or expanse like an arch appearing immediately above us. Merriam-Webster defines the firmament as “the vault or arch of the sky heavens.”Īccording to Easton’s Bible Dictionary, from the Vulgate firmamentum, which is used as the translation of the Hebrew raki'a, or raqia. The definition of the firmament can be essentially summarized as the arch or vault over the earth and sky that separates the earthly realm from what is beyond.
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