[31:2] The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records of Assyria and Babylonia, by T. G. Pinches, p. 48.
CHAPTER IV
THE FIRMAMENT
The sixth verse of the first chapter of Genesis presents a difficulty as to the precise meaning of the principal word, viz. that translated firmament.
"And God said, Let there be a rāqiā‘ in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the rāqiā‘, and divided the waters which were under the rāqiā‘ from the waters which were above the rāqiā‘: and it was so. And God called the rāqiā‘ Shamayim. And the evening and the morning were the second day."
It is, of course, perfectly clear that by the word rāqiā‘ in the preceding passage it is the atmosphere that is alluded to. But later on in the chapter the word is used in a slightly different connection. "God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven."
As we look upward from the earth, we look through a twofold medium. Near the earth we have our atmosphere; above that there is inter-stellar space, void of anything, so far as we know, except the Ether. We are not able to detect any line of demarcation where our atmosphere ends, and the outer void begins. Both therefore are equally spoken of as "the firmament"; and yet there is a difference between the two. The lower supports the clouds; in the upper are set the two great lights and the stars. The upper, therefore, is emphatically reqiā‘ hasshamayim, "the firmament of heaven," of the "uplifted." It is "in the face of"—that is, "before," or "under the eyes of," "beneath,"—this higher expanse that the fowls of the air fly to and fro.
The firmament, then, is that which Tennyson sings of as "the central blue," the seeming vault of the sky, which we can consider as at any height above us that we please. The clouds are above it in one sense; yet in another, sun, moon and stars, which are clearly far higher than the clouds, are set in it.