"Dost thou know the balancings of the clouds, the wondrous works of Him which is perfect in knowledge?… Hast thou with Him spread out the sky?"—JOB xxxvii. 16-18.
"When He prepared the heavens, I was there: when He set a compass upon the face of the depth: when He established the clouds above: when He strengthened the fountains of the deep."—PROVERBS viii. 27, 28.
"Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and meted out heaven with the span?"—ISAIAH xl. 12.
In reading these beautiful verses, let us remember that in the second of them it is the Lord Jesus Christ who says of that time when God prepared the heavens, "I was there." And now, as we are going to think about what God did on the SECOND DAY of Creation, I want you not only very carefully to read those verses in the first chapter of Genesis which tell us about it (verses 6-9), but to keep your Bible open at the place, so that you may be able to refer to them constantly.
When we had read them together, my children noticed that in these verses we find once more three words which are used to tell us about the work of God upon the FIRST DAY. You see these words, do you not?
"God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters."
"God divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament."
"God called the firmament Heaven."
And there is one word which has not been used before: "And God made the firmament."
It is quite simple to see this, but I daresay you want to know, as all the children—even the elder ones—did, the meaning of one very uncommon word which we find in each of these verses. "What does 'firmament' mean?" they said.