What is the Firmament of Genesis 1:8?

UPDATE: A popular atheist Brett Palmer made a 40-minute YouTube video critical of this little article. Seems we hit a nerve. As it turns out, this topic of the "firmament" is of great interest to atheists who attack biblical creation. So we've embedded that video responded to it below.

At Real Science Friday (which airs on Colorado's most-powerful radio station), we teach Dr. Walt Brown's Hydroplate Theory as the best understanding of the global flood, geology and the relevant scriptures.

God called the Firmament Heaven

By Pastor Bob Enyart
Denver Bible Church

Dr. Walt Brown's Hydroplate Theory helps to understand Noah's Flood, geology and the relevant scriptures. On Day Two of creation, God formed the crust of the earth, the firmament, miles above a massive subterranean ocean. "Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament" (Gen. 1:7). The global flood began when these "fountains of the great deep were broken up," (Gen. 7:11). Dr. Brown's book, In the Beginning, demonstrates powerfully that the world's major geologic features flow logically from these initial conditions. But some creationists who disagree point out that, "God called the firmament Heaven" (Gen. 1:8), claiming that this firmament must be either the atmosphere (Morris) or outer space (Humphreys).

However at RSF we show that, whether figurative or literal, the crust of the earth is the boundary between heaven and hell. It is consistent with the Bible story that God would originally call the crust of the earth "heaven." Everything below the crust can be referred to as hell, the prison God had planned for any future unrepentant beings. "Hell from beneath is excited about you, to meet you at your coming" (Isa. 14:9, etc.). For the newly-made earth, the Lord logically referred to everything from the crust and above as heaven. Hence dozens of verses indicate that heaven also refers to the earth's atmosphere as in "rain from heaven;" the "dew of heaven;" "birds of heaven;" "dust from the heaven;" city walls "fortified up to heaven;" smoke rises "to the midst of heaven;" "the heavens are shut" in drought; "frost of heaven;" "clouds of heaven;" "snow from heaven;" "hail from heaven;" and the east winds "blow in the heavens." Thus even after the Fall, from Genesis and Job, through the Gospels, Acts and Revelation, the Bible continued to refer to the atmosphere, one molecule above the ground, as heaven. Also, the Bible's thirty-two occurrences of the phrase "kingdom of heaven" appear only in the royal Gospel of Matthew, and some of these (Mat. 11:12; 13:24 with Mat. 13:38; 16:19; Mat. 18:1 with Luke 9:46; etc.) locate this kingdom of "heaven" at least partially on earth.

"God called the firmament Heaven," because the earth's crust formed the border between heaven and the future hell. The firmament divided the waters of the earth (Gen. 1:2, 6) which even reserved the floodwaters of judgment below ground. And after the Fall earth permanently lost its heavenly designation, for apparently God will never fully replicate the first earth. Only two detailed Bible passages report on events prior to the Fall, the Genesis creation account and Isaiah's record of Lucifer's fall, and both of these passages refer to earth as heaven. Isaiah 14:12 describes "Lucifer" as "fallen from heaven," yet Scripture places him on earth at the moment of his fall. "You were in Eden, the garden of God," (Ezek. 28:13), and "you have said in your heart: "I will ascend into heaven... I will ascend above the heights of the clouds" (Isa. 14:13-14), "yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, to the lowest depths of the Pit," (Isa. 14:15). Even though he was on earth, Lucifer fell "from heaven," because prior to the Fall, the surface of the earth was part of heaven's realm. Notice that just as gravity pulls our physical flesh down toward the center of the earth, the Fall created the world system which relentlessly pulls our spiritual flesh, drawing us down toward the lowest depths until death, and then the believer's released spirit soars upward to heaven, whereas the unbeliever's unfettered spirit falls downward, the firmament no longer keeping him out of Hades, thus his soul plummets into hell. C.S. Lewis wrote the preface to D.E. Harding's esoteric The Hierarchy of Heaven & Earth in which Harding wrote that "Hierarchy is... something like the ancient circles of heaven and earth and hell" (1952, p. 27), and that the "narrowest Hell would be widest Heaven if the Devil could only bring himself to turn round and look out from the Centre instead of in at himself" (p. 187). In the modern classic, Soul of Science, (1994, p. 38), Pearcey and Thaxton describe the view of Christian "medieval cosmology" that "at the very center of the universe was Hell, then the earth, then (moving outward from the center) the progressively nobler spheres of the heavens." Christians continue to affirm this hierarchy quoting Paul who was "caught up to the third heaven" (2 Cor 12:2), the first being the sky, the second is space, and the third God's habitation. King David even seems to refer to the "earth" as "the foundations of heaven" (2 Sam. 22:8).

Moses used the word firmament nine times in the creation story. He intentionally distinguished the last four occurrences from the first four, all of which pivot around the central instance where God called the earth's firmament Heaven. Each of the four in the second grouping (Genesis 1:14, 15, 17, 20) is qualified separately by an exceptional repetition. The prepositional phrase "of the heavens" makes a distinction between the first firmament of the earth, and the second "firmament of the heavens." And if firmament means the "heavens," the very term "firmament of the heavens" would seem unnecessarily redundant. However, the qualifier "of the heavens" is added so that the reader will not confuse this firmament of sky and space with the previous firmament of earth. Thus, readers alien to the notion of "heaven" on earth should nonetheless be able to separate the two firmaments, and understand God's meaning. Now, millennia after the Fall, God's own record of creation notwithstanding, sin has almost completely obscured the original perspective of the earth's surface as "heaven."

When man rebelled, earth became more like hell than heaven. So the Fall narrowed the spheres of heaven but only by a single molecule, which now begin at the atmosphere. Thus man's habitation lost its heavenly designation. The Bible describes Hell as below, bounded by the firmament. However in the beginning "God called the firmament Heaven" because that's where He placed Adam and Eve, above ground on the surface, in the heavens, in fellowship with Him, not in any other realm but in His kingdom, in heaven on earth.

2011 UPDATE: YouTube anti-creationist Brett Palmer created a 40-minute rebuttal video (embedded here) of this little article on the firmament. Seems like we hit a nerve. Atheists claim that the word firmament (Hebrew raqia) discredits the creation account showing that Genesis is not God's Word and that it merely echoes the ancient world's false belief in a solid doomed sky above the earth. So, if raqia (firmament) refers not only to the heavens, but also to the crust of the earth, standing above a subterranean chamber of water, then atheists would lose a favorite argument.

Raqia is the noun from the verb raqa meaning being hammered or spread out, as in working metal into a thin sheet or plate. "They beat (raqa) the gold into thin sheets" (Ex. 39:3). "The goldsmith overspreads (raqa) it with gold" (Isa. 40:19; i.e., gold-plated). Similarly, God overspread the waters of the earth with the plates of the earth's crust, i.e., the firmament, what Walt Brown calls hydroplates. For "God made the firmament (raqia), and divided the waters which were under the firmament (raqia, the crustal plates) from the waters which were above the firmament" (Gen. 1:7)

When the Bible specifically links raqa to the earth (as in the passages below), and because words typically have multiple meanings, it is extreme to insist that raqia cannot refer to anything but the heavens. Genesis was written back when pagans wondered what held up the earth. Perhaps it rested on the back of a tortois, or on a pillar, or was held up by Atlas. Yet the most ancient Scripture teaches that God, "hangs the earth on nothing" (Job 26:7), which is visually consistent with modern cosmology. For just as the firmament of the earth holds up the mountains, so too, the firmament "of the heavens" is strong enough to hold the earth.

Firmament (raqia) is used "of the heavens" commonly and eleven times the Bible speaks of God stretching out the heavens. Then there is something not included in the above video. Another three times the Bible says that God raqa the earth itself. This shows, unlike as stressed on YouTube, that raqia very naturally also refers to the earth. Dr. Walt Brown's book lists these verses but I'll repeat them here for Mr. Palmer's consideration:

To Him who laid out (raqa) the earth above the waters… Ps. 136:6

Thus says God the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread forth (raqa) the earth and that which comes from it… Isa. 42:5

“I am the Lord, who makes all things, who stretches out the heavens all alone, who spreads abroad (raqa) the earth by Myself; Isa. 44:24

The firmament (raqia) of the creation account was iconic in ancient Israel, as the Tyndale Bible Dictionary says, "the firmament is always related to Creation." So the repetition and by two authors show the wording is deliberate. Thus these verses show an ancient awareness in Scripture that God raqa the Earth, that is, that His stretching out of the raqia of Genesis 1:8 readily refers to tierra firma, or as the King James translators coined the word from the Latin, the firmament.

Raqia and Heaven Both Refer Also to the Earth

Etymologically, raqia relates to raqa as sharia (law) relates to shara'a (to ordain or decree). Further, the ancient Middle East commonly ended names in "ia," and in this particular example of early Hebrew usage, raqia, though not a proper name, is the name for something created by raqa.

Regarding the scientific claims of Walt Brown's Hydroplate Theory, Mr. Palmer incorporates a critical 10-minute video by an east coast atheist who calls herself WildwoodClaire1 who even criticizes Dr. Brown for using the word "theory." The video contains vulgarity and seems rather sloppy. For example, it claims that Dr. Brown ignores matters that he (and the entire creation movement) pay great attention to. In mocking style the host says that Dr. Brown doesn't take limestone deposits into account, even though his online and hardback book, In the Beginning, has an entire chapter titled, The Origin of Limestone that is even listed on his homepage. Of course any human being can draw false conclusions about scientific matters, but it's over-the-top sloppy to report that Dr. Brown ignores limestone deposits.

Palmer says that "no one before or since Enyart has ever asserted that two firmaments were created in the creation story," that is, the claim that the term firmament refers to sky and space, and also to the sphere of the world. So, as the originator of this concept that firmament has two meanings, I'm gratified that it's catching on. :) The Google results for "define:firmament" gives two meanings:

• The heavens or the sky, esp. when regarded as a tangible thing
• A sphere or world viewed as a collection of people

Hey, for Google, that's not half bad, for the firmament was called heaven so that Adam and Eve could be fruitful and multiply and fill the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.

The worldwide use of a seven-day week results from the creation account. And those seven days are named for the heavenly bodies (Saturn, Sun, Moon, etc.) as God said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years." (On a related topic we interviewed Scientific American editor and atheist Michael Shermer for Real Science Friday. "Dr. Shermer, while much of the ancient world was worshipping heavenly bodies, could you at least agree that the Bible is correct on page one, where it states that the Sun is a light? Moses was correct also when he taught in Deuteronomy that the planets and stars are not gods and should not be worshipped. So can you agree that the Bible is correct in Genesis chapter one, that the Sun is not a god, but a light?" To which Shermer infamously replied, which you can hear in this 73-second excerpt (and transcript) that the sun is not a light. Wow. It's often difficult to have a reasonable discussion with atheists.) Also, the worldwide use of blood sacrifices resulted from God commanding Adam and Noah to sacrifice animals prefiguring the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God.

As Wikipedia reports, "The notion of the sky as a solid object (rather than just an atmospheric expanse) was widespread among both ancient civilisations and primitive cultures, including ancient Greece, Egypt, China, India, native Americans, Australian aborigines, and also early Christians. It is probably a universal human trait to perceive the sky as a solid dome." Retrieved 8-27-11. However, with the many varied movements in the heavens of the Sun, Moon, planets, stars, comets, and metorites, it's not intuitive that so much of the whole world would end up believing that the Earth had a solid-doomed sky. Except, of course, if the ancients who populated the world after the global flood were misunderstanding the raqia of Day Two as referring to the heavens instead of to the crust of the earth.

So, the Bible speaks of Earth using the same term, raqia, as for the firmament "of the heavens" (clarified that way in Genesis 1). Yet when the paradise of Eden and God's Kingdom of Heaven on Earth became "filled with violence," mankind began to forget that God made earth as part of His Kingdom of heaven. Thus, what changed was the common use of the term heaven for the Earth.

© 2007 - 2011 Bob Enyart, KGOV.com

Notice: Walt Brown's website, and his most recent publication, the 8th edition of his book In the Beginning, mentions Pastor Bob Enyart's "Heaven on Earth" article as a possible solution and he credits pastors Rodriguez and Enyart for this idea.

Email: From Walt Brown to Bob Enyart on March 22, 2005: "Dear Bob, I like your proposal concerning Genesis 1:8a, and after much thought, have decided to include it in the draft of the 8th edition (and at our web site) as one of five possible explanations for Genesis 1:8a. In the attachment, I have credited Pastor Diego Rodriguez and you as the originators of this very attractive explanation. As you will see in Endnote 24 on page 316, a similar suggestion was made by Pastor Diego Rodriguez... If both you and Diego would like me to forward to each of you the other's email, I will do so. That way you can correspond directly with each other. Thank you for sending me your explanation. -Walt"

BIO: Bob Enyart co-hosts Real Science Friday and pastors Denver Bible Church. Bob first had a technical career working:
- at McDonnell Douglas Helicopter Company on the Army's Apache helicopter
- as a systems analyst for "Baby Bell" U S West
- as a program manager for Microsoft, and
- as a senior analyst for PC Week
Bob became a believer in 1973, entered full-time Christian work in 1989, and in 1991 began hosting a daily show on America's most powerful Christian radio station, the 50,000-watt AM 670 KLTT. In 1999, the elders and pastor of Denver's Derby Bible Church ordained Bob into the ministry. In 2000, Derby planted Denver Bible Church with Bob as pastor.

You can see Bob Enyart's materials online or call 1-800-8Enyart for a catalog. If you enjoyed this article, you may also want to read Why Canaan was Cursed?, Polygamy in the Bible, and Slavery in the Bible. And you can hear Bob at RealScienceFriday.com!