Genesis 1:8
“Day Two: The Firmament”Genesis 1:6–8
Bible text: King James Version (1769 Blayney text) · Public domain
Bible text: Berean Standard Bible · Public domain
Bible text: American Standard Version (1901) · Public domain
Bible text: World English Bible, Messianic edition · Public domain
Bible text: Geneva Bible (1599) · Public domain
Bible text: Young's Literal Translation · Public domain
- וַיִּקְרָאvai·yik·Ra'and he calledH7121Conj-w ¦ V-Qal-ConsecImperf-3msVerb Qal Consecutive Imperfect 3rd Singular Masculineוַandיִּקְרָאhe called
- אֱלֹהִים'E·lo·HimGodH430N-mpNoun Plural Masculine Absolute
- לָרָקִיעַla·ra·Ki·a'[to] the firmamentH7549Prep-l ¦ N-msNoun Singular Masculine Absoluteלָ[to] theרָקִיעַfirmament
- שָׁמָיִםsha·Ma·yimheavenH8064N-mpNoun Plural Masculine Absolute
- וַיְהִיvay·hiand there wasH1961Conj-w ¦ V-Qal-ConsecImperf-3msVerb Qal Consecutive Imperfect 3rd Singular Masculineוַandיְהִיthere was
- עֶרֶב'E·reveveningH6153N-msNoun Singular Masculine Absolute
- וַיְהִיvay·hiand there wasH1961Conj-w ¦ V-Qal-ConsecImperf-3msVerb Qal Consecutive Imperfect 3rd Singular Masculineוַandיְהִיthere was
- בֹקֶרVo·kermorningH1242N-msNoun Singular Masculine Absolute
- יוֹםYoma dayH3117N-msNoun Singular Masculine Absolute
- שֵׁנִיshe·NisecondH8145Adj-msAdjective Numerical Position Singular Masculine Absolute
English is a literal word-by-word gloss of the Hebrew, not the KJV's wording. Why?
This is the original text the KJV's translators worked from — each Hebrew word with its own literal English meaning in this verse, prepared by scholars at Tyndale House, Cambridge. The KJV translates whole sentences, not word by word, so its wording differs: one Hebrew word can become several English words, and the KJV may choose “the LORD” where the gloss reads “Yahweh”. Both are faithful — they answer different questions. For the KJV's own rendering, switch to the KJV text.
Words in [ ] are added by the English.
- firmament (KJV) / expanse (BSB) רָקִיעַ
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Public-domain commentary
Matthew Henry
From his Commentary on the Whole Bible. Henry wrote on whole passages, and this entry covers Genesis 1:6–8.
We have here an account of the second day's work, the creation of the firmament, in which observe, 1. The command of God concerning it: Let there be a firmament, an expansion, so the Hebrew word signifies, like a sheet spread, or a curtain drawn out. This includes all that is visible above the earth, between it and the third heavens: the air, its higher, middle, and lower, regions - the celestial globe, and all the spheres and orbs of light above: it reaches as high as the place where the stars are fixed, for that is called here the firmament of heaven (Genesis 1:14, Genesis 1:15), and as low as the place where the birds fly, for that also is called the firmament of heaven, Genesis 1:20. When God had made the light, he appointed the air to be the receptacle and vehicle of its beams, and to be as a medium of communication between the invisible and the visible world; for, though between heaven and earth there is an inconceivable distance, yet there is not an impassable gulf, as there is between heaven and hell. This firmament is not a wall of partition, but a way of intercourse. See Job 26:7; Job 37:18; Psalm 104:3; Amos 9:6. 2. The creation of it. Lest it should seem as if God had only commanded it to be done, and some one else had done it, he adds, And God made the firmament. What God requires of us he himself works in us, or it is not done. He that commands faith, holiness, and love, creates them by the power of his grace going along with his word, that he may have all the praise. Lord, give what thou commandest, and then command what thou pleasest. The firmament is said to be the work of God's fingers, Psalm 8:3. Though the vastness of its extent declares it to be the work of his arm stretched out, yet the admirable fineness of its constitution shows that it is a curious piece of art, the work of his fingers. 3. The use and design of it - to divide the waters from the waters, that is, to distinguish between the waters that are wrapped up in the clouds and those that cover the sea, the waters in the air and those in the earth. See the difference between these two carefully observed, Deuteronomy 11:10, Deuteronomy 11:11, where Canaan is upon this account preferred to Egypt, that Egypt was moistened and made fruitful with the waters that are under the firmament, but Canaan with waters from above, out of the firmament, even the dew of heaven, which tarrieth not for the sons of men, Micah 5:7. God has, in the firmament of his power, chambers, store-chambers, whence he watereth the earth, Psalm 104:13; Psalm 65:9, Psalm 65:10. He has also treasures, or magazines, of snow and hail, which he hath reserved against the day of battle and war, Job 38:22, Job 38:23. O what a great God is he who has thus provided for the comfort of all that serve him and the confusion of all that hate him! It is good having him our friend, and bad having him our enemy. 4. The naming of it: He called the firmament heaven. It is the visible heaven, the pavement of the holy city; above the firmament God is said to have his throne (Ezekiel 1:26), for he has prepared it in the heavens; the heavens therefore are said to rule, Daniel 4:26. Is not God in the height of heaven? Job 22:12. Yes, he is, and we should be led by the contemplation of the heavens that are in our eye to consider our Father who is in heaven. The height of the heavens should remind us of God's supremacy and the infinite distance there is between us and him; the brightness of the heavens and their purity should remind us of his glory, and majesty, and perfect holiness; the vastness of the heavens, their encompassing of the earth, and the influence they have upon it, should remind us of his immensity and universal providence.
Historical interpretation
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Although God had already previously made heaven, now he makes the firmament. For he made heaven first, about which he says, “Heaven is my throne.” But after that he makes the firmament, that is, the corporeal heaven. For every corporeal object is, without doubt, firm and solid; and it is this that “divides the water which is above heaven from the water which is below heaven.”
Although God said about the light that came to be on the first day that "it was very good," He did not say this about the firmament which came to be on the second day, because the firmament had not yet been finished, neither in its structure nor in its adornment. The Creator delayed until the lights came to be so that when [ the firmament ] was adorned with the sun and the moon and the stars, and the strength of the darkness that was weakened by the lights shining from it, He would then say of the firmament as well as of [ the rest of creation ] that "it was very good."
Since Scripture called heaven the firmament, we can without absurdity hold that anything below the ethereal heaven, in which everything is peaceful and stable, is more mutable and perishable and is a kind of corporeal matter prior to the reception of beauty and the distinction of forms.
And if the words, "God saw that it was good," are not said of the work of the second day, this is because the work of distinguishing the waters was only begun on that day, but perfected on the third. Hence these words, that are said of the third day, refer also to the second. Or it may be that Scripture does not use these words of approval of the second days' work, because this is concerned with the distinction of things not evident to the senses of mankind. Or, again, because by the firmament is simply understood the cloudy region of the air, which is not one of the permanent parts of the universe, nor of the principal divisions of the world. The above three reasons are given by Rabbi Moses [Perplex. ii.], and to these may be added a mystical one derived from numbers and assigned by some writers, according to whom the work of the second day is not marked with approval because the second number is an imperfect number, as receding from the perfection of unity.
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This verse
God names the sky Heaven, showing that it is his, and evening and morning bring the second day of creation to its close.
“And God called the firmament Heaven.”
God names the sky as he named Day and Night, and so shows that it is his. Here shâmayim is the visible sky.
“And the evening and the morning”
The same close as the first day, with evening first.
“were the second day.”
Day two is complete with its work of making room, and the gathering of the lower waters waits for day three.
Passage studyGenesis 1:6–8
God Makes the Sky and Calls It Heaven
Summary
On the second day God speaks again, and a wide open space appears in the middle of the waters that cover the earth. He makes the firmament, sets it between the waters below and the waters above, and everything happens just as he commanded. Then he names it Heaven, and evening and morning close the second day. In three verses we learn that the sky over us exists because God made it, that his word comes to pass exactly, and that he was already making room for a world full of life.
God speaks, and the sky is made
The first day has closed, and the earth is still covered with the waters of Genesis 1:2, an earth “without form, and void”. Light has already been made and set apart from the darkness (Genesis 1:3–5). Now God gives his second command. He speaks before any person exists to hear him, for man is made only on the sixth day (Genesis 1:27).
The words “And God said” come ten times in the creation account, and each time God’s speaking alone brings about what he wills. The name used for God, ʼĕlôhîym, is plural in form and takes a singular verb, a plural of majesty that speaks of the power and full authority of the one Creator. A psalm praises him for this very work: “By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth” (Psalm 33:6).
The chapter tells this day’s work in two steps. In verse 6 God commands, and in verse 7 “God made the firmament”. It tells the making of the lights (Genesis 1:14, 1:16) and of the land animals (Genesis 1:24, 1:25) the same way. God’s command and his making belong together, so the sky owes its existence to him alone, and the same psalm joins the two in one line: “he spake, and it was done” (Psalm 33:9).
The verb for “made”, ʻâsâh, is a very ordinary word for doing or making something, and it takes in fashioning and shaping. God is working here with waters that were already there (Genesis 1:2), giving them a shape and a limit. A different verb, bara, is used for the first creating, and on the second day God is shaping and ordering what he has already made.
The verse closes with “and it was so”. What God commanded is exactly what happened, at once and with nothing left undone. The same words return through the chapter (Genesis 1:9, 1:11, 1:15, 1:24, 1:30), and Isaiah says the same of God’s word in every age: “it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please” (Isaiah 55:11). The nations around Israel told of gods who struggled with one another and with forces of chaos before the world could be ordered. Genesis tells of one God who gives a decree, and the waters part.
What is the firmament?
The firmament is the sky, the wide open space you see when you look up. God himself names it Heaven two verses later (Genesis 1:8). The Hebrew word is râqîyaʻ, from a root meaning to stamp, to beat out or to spread out, and it means an expanse, in particular the wide arch of the sky overhead. The BSB reads expanse where the KJV reads “firmament”, and that is a fair picture of what the word means.
Genesis describes the firmament as anyone sees it from the ground, so it covers more than any one of our modern terms. Birds fly “in the open firmament of heaven” (Genesis 1:20), which we would call the atmosphere. The sun, moon and stars are set “in the firmament of the heaven” (Genesis 1:17), which we would call space. The word takes in everything we see above the earth, from the breathable air where clouds form and birds fly to the heights where the lights shine. Isaiah pictures God as the one “that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in” (Isaiah 40:22).
Is the firmament a solid dome?
People ask whether Genesis teaches that a hard dome stretches over the earth. The word and its setting point to a wide open space where birds can fly. The idea of a dome has three main supports, and each has a plain answer.
In this very chapter the birds fly “in the open firmament”, so the firmament is open space.
The waters below and the waters above
God puts the firmament “in the midst of the waters”, which means in the middle of them. The earth was covered with water, and God opens the sky within that water, so that some lies above the new space and some lies below it. The doubled words “the waters from the waters” make the separation deliberate and clear: two distinct bodies of water with room between them.
The waters under the firmament are the ones God gathers on the third day and calls Seas, so that the dry land appears (Genesis 1:9, 1:10). God set those waters in their place from the start. Proverbs says he “gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment” (Proverbs 8:29), and Wisdom speaks there of being present when he set the bounds of creation (Proverbs 8:27). When the LORD answers Job, he speaks of setting boundaries for the sea (Job 38:8–11), and a psalm praises his command over the waters at creation (Psalm 104:6–9).
What are the waters above the firmament?
The waters above are harder to pin down, and faithful Christians have held three main views.
On any of these readings, God has put water above and water below, with room in between.
Did these waters return in the flood?
The flood account uses its own words for its waters, and yet the two accounts sit close together. When the flood came, water broke out from below and poured down from the sky (Genesis 7:11), and both were stopped when it ended (Genesis 8:2). Peter connects the earth’s first forming out of water with the world’s destruction by water (2 Peter 3:5, 3:6). Some Christians see the flood as water from below and above returning over the earth at God’s command.
Does this fit what we know of the sky?
It fits well with what anyone can see, a wide space of air with seas beneath it and water in the clouds above it. Water rises from the earth as vapour, gathers into clouds and falls as rain, and Scripture itself speaks of clouds pouring down rain formed from vapour (Job 36:27, 36:28) and of rivers that keep running into the sea (Ecclesiastes 1:7). Genesis describes the world as it looks from the ground, and its concern is to tell you who made it and set it in order.
Why God divided the waters
The verb “divide”, bâdal, means to set apart, separate or distinguish, so that two things are kept distinct. God has already divided light from darkness (Genesis 1:4), and later the lights in the sky divide day from night (Genesis 1:14). On the second day he divides water from water, and a single mass of water becomes an ordered world with distinct realms.
God did this freely, because he meant the earth to be lived in. Isaiah says of him that “he formed it to be inhabited” (Isaiah 45:18). Parting the waters makes room. The lower waters can then be gathered so that dry land appears and plants grow on it (Genesis 1:11), and the open sky is ready for the lights of the fourth day and the birds of the fifth. Each day builds on the one before, and the sea creatures, birds and land animals come once there is a place for them (Genesis 1:20–25).
The dividing God does here runs through the rest of Scripture as well. He sets apart the holy from the common, and he calls his people to be distinct: “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord” (2 Corinthians 6:17).
God names the firmament Heaven
When God calls the firmament Heaven, he shows that the sky is his and that it is what he says it is. The verb “called”, qara, is an act of authoritative naming. He has already named Day and Night (Genesis 1:5), and he will go on to name Earth and Seas (Genesis 1:10). A psalm says that he also calls every star by name (Psalm 147:4).
The word for heaven, shâmayim, means the sky or the heavens. Scripture uses the same word for the place of God’s throne, “the LORD’s throne is in heaven” (Psalm 11:4), and the setting tells you which is meant. Here God is naming something he has just made, so it is the visible sky, where birds fly and where the sun, moon and stars are set. God himself is greater than the heaven he made, as Solomon says when he prays, “the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee” (1 Kings 8:27). Scripture still speaks of the sky and of God’s dwelling together, and in the same prayer Solomon asks God to “hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place” (1 Kings 8:30).
The name also does plain work in the story. From here on the chapter speaks of “the waters under the heaven” (Genesis 1:9) and “the firmament of the heaven” (Genesis 1:14), so the opening words about “the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1) now have a place you can point to.
Is this the third heaven Paul speaks of?
Paul writes of a man caught up to the third heaven, which he also calls paradise (2 Corinthians 12:2, 12:4). He leaves his numbering unexplained. Christians have commonly taken it to mean the sky, then the stars, and then the place of God’s presence, and on that reading the heaven of this verse is the visible sky that lies below the other two.
Evening and morning, the second day
“And the evening and the morning were the second day” closes this day in the same words that closed the first. Evening, ereb, and morning, boqer, mark a complete day, and the steady rhythm of the chapter shows God working in order, one day after another. The second day has a single work, the making of a space, and since the making is told in verse 7, verse 8 gives the naming and the close. Living things come later, once there is a place for them.
Why is the second day not called good?
Readers notice that the second day closes without the words “God saw that it was good”. Genesis leaves the reason unstated, so we hold any answer loosely. The likeliest explanation is that the work on the waters was still unfinished. It is completed on the third day, when the waters under the heaven are gathered into one place and “God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:10). The sky is certainly among the things God approves at the end, when he sees “every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31).
How long was the second day?
“The second day” means the day that follows the first, closed in the same words of evening and morning. Many Christians take these as ordinary days because of that wording and because the Sabbath command rests on God’s six days of work (Exodus 20:11). Others read them as longer periods or as an ordered pattern, noting that the sun’s place is given only on the fourth day (Genesis 1:16) and that “in the day” in Genesis 2:4 looks back over the whole work. The question is set out more fully at Genesis 1:5.
The Son through whom the heavens were made
The New Testament tells us that the Son of God took part in this work. John says, “All things were made by him” (John 1:3), and Paul says that this includes all things “that are in heaven, and that are in earth” (Colossians 1:16), and that “by him all things consist” (Colossians 1:17). Hebrews speaks to the Son directly and calls the heavens “the works of thine hands” (Hebrews 1:10). So the firmament was made and named through the eternal Word, who upholds it still.
The same Lord who brought order to the waters brings a new order to lives confused by sin. “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). He separates light from darkness in human hearts, truth from error, and his redeemed people from the world.
Looking up at the sky God named
The sky above you today carries the name God gave it. “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1), and a psalm calls on the heavens and the waters above them to praise him (Psalm 148:4). Looking up is a good moment to remember who made it and to give him thanks.
The rain is part of the same gift. Moses told Israel that the promised land “drinketh water of the rain of heaven”, a land the LORD their God cares for (Deuteronomy 11:11, 11:12). Paul and Barnabas told the people of Lystra that God showed his goodness to all people when he “gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons” (Acts 14:17). The next time it rains, you can thank the God who made the sky and still sends the rain.
The God who parted the waters with a word is able to bring clarity and order to confused circumstances, and his word to us is as sure as his word on the second day. What he says, he does, and it is so.
Genesis 1:6
“And God said,”
The second of God’s commands in the chapter, spoken after the first day has closed. His word alone is enough.
“Let there be a firmament”
A command for a wide expanse, the sky, which God names Heaven in verse 8.
“in the midst of the waters,”
In the middle of the waters that have covered the earth since verse 2. God opens his space inside them.
“and let it divide the waters from the waters.”
The firmament’s purpose is to keep two bodies of water apart, one below it and one above. The doubled “waters” makes the separation plain.
Genesis 1:7
“And God made the firmament,”
What God commanded in verse 6, he now does. ʻâsâh is the plain word for making, used here of shaping waters that were already there.
“and divided the waters which were under the firmament”
The lower waters, soon gathered into the Seas (Genesis 1:10).
“from the waters which were above the firmament:”
The upper waters, taken as the clouds, as water beyond the visible sky, or as an early canopy.
“and it was so.”
The command came to pass exactly, as it does all through the chapter.
Genesis 1:8 This verse
“And God called the firmament Heaven.”
God names the sky as he named Day and Night, and so shows that it is his. Here shâmayim is the visible sky.
“And the evening and the morning”
The same close as the first day, with evening first.
“were the second day.”
Day two is complete with its work of making room, and the gathering of the lower waters waits for day three.
Last revised