Firmament

It is said, Gen 1:7, that God made the firmament in the midst of the waters, to separate the inferior from the superior. The word used on this occasion properly signifies expansion, or something expanded. This expansion is properly the atmosphere, which encompasses the globe on all sides, and separates the water in the clouds from that on the earth.

Firmament (Gen 1:6; Gen 1:14-15; Gen 1:17), that which is distended, expanded—the expanse of heaven, i.e. the visible arch or vault of heaven resting on the earth.

With some old astronomers the firmament is the orb of the fixed stars, or the highest of all the heavens. But in Scripture and in common language it is used for the middle regions, the space or expanse appearing like an arch immediately above us in the heavens. Many of the ancients and of the moderns also, account the firmament a fluid substance; but those who gave it the name of ’firmament’ must have regarded it as solid, and so we would infer from Gen 1:6, where it forms the division between water and water.

The Hebrews seem to have considered the firmament as transparent, like a crystal or sapphire (Eze 1:22; Dan 12:3; Exo 24:10; Rev 4:6).

Gen 1:17, the expanse of the heavens immediately above the earth. The Hebrews seem to have viewed this as an immense crystalline dome, studded with stars, resting on the far distant horizon all around the spectator, and separating the waters above us from those on the earth. Through its windows the rain descended. It is not necessary to suppose they thought it was solid, Psa 19:1 ; Isa 40:22 . It is not the aim of Scripture to give scientific statements of natural phenomena. Teaching religion, not astronomy of physics, it does not anticipate modern discoveries, but speaks of natural objects and occurrences in the common language of men everywhere. Hence, in part, its attractiveness in all ages as a book for the people.\par

Firmament. In Scripture, the word denotes an expanse, a wide extent; for such is the signification of the Hebrew word. The original, therefore, does not convey the sense of solidity, but of stretching, extension; the great arch of expanse over our heads, in which are placed the atmosphere and the clouds, and in which the stars appear to be placed, and are really seen. -- Webster.

Raqi’ah, "the expanse stretched out as a curtain" over the earth (Isa 40:22; Psa 104:2), resting on the mountains as its pillars (the language is phenomenal, as indeed necessarily is that of even men of science often): Job 26:11. It was the reservoir of rain and snow, which poured through its opened "windows" or "doors" (Gen 7:11; Isa 24:18; Psa 78:23). It includes the atmosphere immediately round the earth, in which the birds fly, and which bears up the clouds (Gen 1:6-7; Gen 1:20; in Gen 1:14 it also comprises the region in which the sun, moon, and stars are seen).

"Firmament" (from the Vulgate: firmamentum; Septuagint: stereooma) is derived from firmness; but the Hebrew expresses no such notion, as if Moses thought the sky a hard firm vault, in which the heavenly bodies were fixed. The sky in Job 37:18 is termed "strong, as a molten looking glass," namely, a polished copper mirror. But it is not the solidity, but the transparent clearness and the smiling brightness, which is the point of comparison. Otherwise, how could birds fly in a solid? The language is figurative and phenomenal. In Eze 1:26 the throne is seen above the "firmament," therefore the firmament must be transparent.

a term introduced into our language from the. Vulgate, which- gives firmamentum as the equivalent of the στερἑωμα of the Sept. and the raki’a (רָקַיעִ) of the Hebrew text (Gen 1:6); more fully רְקַיעִ הִשָּׁמִיַם, firmament of the heavens, Gen 1:14-15; Gen 1:17). SEE HEAVEN. ’

1. The Hebrew term is generally regarded as expressive of simple expansion, and is so rendered in the margin of the A. V. (1. c.); -but the true idea of the word is a complex one, taking in the mode by which the expansion is effected’, sand consequently implying the nature of the material expanded. The verb רָקִע, means to expand by beating, whether by the hand, the foot, or any instrument. It is especially used, however, of beating out metals into thin plates (Exo 39:3; Num 16:39), and hence the substantive רַקֻּעַים"broad plates" of metal (Num 16:38). It is thus applied to the flattened surface of the solid. earth (Isaiah 42; Isaiah 5; Isa 44:24; Psa 136:6), and it is. in this sense that the term is applied to the heaven in Job 37:18,-" Hast thou spread (rather hammered) out the sky- which is strong, and as a molten looking-glass"-the mirrors to which hue refers being made of metal. The sense of solidity, therefore, is combined with the ideas of expansion and tenuity is- the term rakia. Saalschtitz (Archaol. ii, 67) conceives that the ideas of solidity is inconsistent with Gen 2:6, which implies, according to him, the passage of the mist through the rakia; he therefore gives it the sense of pure expansion-it is the large and lofty room in which the winds, etc. have their abode. But it should be observed that Gen 2:6 implies the very reverse. If the mist had penetrated the rakia it would have descended in the form of rains the mist, however, was formed under the rakia, and resembled a heavy dew-a mode of fructifying the earth which, from its regularity and quietude, was more appropriate to a state of innocence than rain, the occasional violence of which associated it with the idea of divine vengeance. But the same idea of solidity runs through all the references to the rakia.

In Exo 24:10, it is poetically represented as a solid floor, "a paved work of a sapphire stone nor is the image much weakened if we regard the word לַבְנִת as applying to the transparency of the stone rather than to the paving as in the A. V., either sense being admissible. - So again, in Eze 1:22-26, the " firmament" is the floor on which the throne. of the Most High is placed. That the rakia should be transparent, as implied in the comparisons with the sapphire (Exodus 1. c.) and with crystal (Ezekiel 1. c.; comp. Rev 4:6), is by no means inconsistent with its solidity. Further, the office of the rakia in the economy of the world demanded strength and substance. It was to serve as a division between the waters above and the waters below (Gen 1:7). In order to enter into this description we must carry our ideas back-to the time when the earth was a chaotic mass overspread wit-h water, in which the material elements of the heavens were intermingled. The first step, therefore, in the work of orderly arrangement as to separate the elements of heaven and earth, and to fix a floor of partition between the waters of the heaven and the waters of the earth; and accordingly the rakia was created to support the upper reservoir (Psa 148:4; comp. Psa 104:3, where Jehovah is represented as ",,building his chambers of water," not simply "in water," as the A. Vers.; the prep. בְּ signifying the material out of which the beams and joists were made), itself being supported at the edge or rim of the earth’s disk by the mountains ’(2Sa 22:8; Job 26:11). In keeping with- this view the rakia was provided with "windows-" (Gen 7:11; Isa 24:18; Mal 3:10) and " doors" (Psa 78:23), through which the rain and the, snow might descend. A secondary purpose which the rakia served was to support the heavenly bodies, sun, moon, and stars (Gen 1:14), in which they were fixed as nails, and from which consequently, they might be said figuratively to drop off (Isa 14:12; Isa 34:4; Mat 24:29). .In all these particulars we recognise the same view as: was entertained by the Greeks, and, to a certain extent, by the Latins. The former applied to the heaven such epithets as "’brazen" (χάλκεον, Homer, Illad, xvii, 425; Pind. Pyth. 10:42; Nem. vi, 6; πολύχαλκον, I. v, 504; Od. iii,’2) and iron" σιδήρεον, Od. 15:328; 17:565)-epithets also used in the Scriptures (Lev 26:19)-and that this was not merely poetical embellishment appears from the views promulgated: by their philosophers, Empedocles, who described the heavens as στερἐμνιον and κρυσταλλοειδής, composed of air glacialized by fire (Plutarch, Plac. Phil. ii, 11; Stobaeus, Eclog. Phys. i, 24; Diog. Laertius, 8:77; Lactant. De Opif Dei, c. 17; comp. Karsten, Phil. Gr. Veter. Operum Reliquicejii, 422); and Artemidorus, who taught that "summa cceli ora solidissima est, in modum tecti durata" (Seneca, Qucest. 7:13). The same idea is expressed in the ccelo afixa siderao of the Latins (Pliny ii, 39; 18:57).

Plato also, in his Timceus, makes mention of the visible heaven under the notion of τάσις (from τείνω, to extend), not unlike the ;Hebrew derivation. If it be objected to the Mosaic account that the view embodied in the word rakia does not harmonize with strict philosophical truth, the answer to such an objection is, that the writer describes things as they appear rather than as they are. But, in ’truth, the same absence of philosophic truth may be traced throughout all the terms applied to this subject, and the objection is levelled rather against the principles of language than anything else. Examine the Latin coelum (κοίλον), the "hollow place" or cave scooped out of solid space ("cavernme coeli," Lucret. - 4:172; compare Pott, Etymol. Forschungen, i, 23, 27); our own heaven," i.e. what is heaved up; the Greek οὐρανός, similarly significant of height’ (Pott, Etym. Forsch.i, 123); or the German "himmel," from heimeln, to cover the "roof" which constitutes the "heim" or abode of man: in each there is a large amount of philosophical error. Correctly speaking, of course, the atmosphere is the true rakia by which the clouds are supported, and undefined space is the abode of the celestial bodies. There certainly appears an inconsistency in treating the rakia as the support both of the clouds and of the stars, for it could not have escaped observation that the clouds were below the stars; but perhaps this may be referred to the same feeling which -is expressed in the caelumn ruit of the Latins, the downfall of the rakia in stormy weather. Although the rakia and the shamayim (" heavens") are treated ’as identical in Gen 1:8, yet it was more correct to recognise a distinction between them, as implied in the expression "firmament of the heavens" (Gen 1:14), the former being the upheaving power and the latter the upheaved body-the former the line of demarcation between heaven and earth, the latter the strata or stories into which the heaven was divided. SEE COSMOGONY.

2. Hence it is easy to conceive how the Gr. translators came to render the Heb. term in question by στερέωμα, a word which is commonly used to designate some compact solid, such as the basis of a pillar, or a pillar itself, and which is used elsewhere by the Sept. as equivalent to the Heb. סֶלִע,’a rock (Psa 18:2), and by Symmachus and Theodotion as the rendering of the Heb. מִטֶּה, a staff. Basil (Hexaem. ’Hom. 3) explains the term as not intended to describe what is naturally hard, and solid, and weighty, which belongs. rather to the earth; but says that because the nature of the object above it is fine and thin, and not perceptible by sense, it is called στερέωμα, by a comparison between things of extreme rarity and such: as can be :perceived by sense (συγκρίσει τῶν λεπτοτάτων καί τῇαίσθήσει καταληπτῶν). It is not very clear what his meaning here is, but probably he intended that as a solid extension would be properly called a στερέωμα, so this mass of light and vapory substances might by analogy receive this name. Others have suggested that this term was employed to indicate that the רָקַיעִis the "universitas τῶν λεπτομερῶν in regionein superam conglobata et firmata," along with the idea that this "nihil habet uspiam inanitatis, sed omnia sui generis naturse plena" (Fuller, Miscel. Sac. bk. i, c. vi). Fuller thinks also that the Sept. selected στερέωμα rather than πέτασμα or περιπέτασμα in order to convey the idea of depth as well as superficial expansion. The general opinion, however, is, that the Sept. adopted this term rather than one exactly equivalent to the original, because it conveys what was the Hebrew belief concerning the upper atmosphere or visible heavens, which they regarded as a solid expanse encircling the earth, although the true state of the case was probably not unknown to them (Job 36:27-28). Others, nevertheless, think that the waters above. the rakia are merely the clouds, which need no solid support (Delitzsch, Comment. on Gen 1:6; Kurz, Bible and Astronomy, in Hist. of the Old Covenant, i, 30).

3. With some old astronomers the firmament is the orb of the fixed stars, or the highest of all the heavens. But in Scripture and in common language it is used for the middle regions, the space or expanse appearing like an arch immediately above us in the heavens. Many of the ancients, and of the moderns also, account the firmament a fluid substance; but those who gave it the name of "firmament" must have regarded it as solid. In the Ptolemaic astronomy, the firmament is called the eighth heaven or sphere, with respect to the seven spheres of the planets, which it surrounds. It is supposed to have two motions--a diurnal motion imparted to it by the primum mobile, from east to west, about the poles of the ecliptic, and another opposite motion from west to east, which last is completed, according to Tycho, in 25,412 years; according to Ptolemy, in 36,000; and according to Copernicus, in 25,800; in which time the fixed stars return to the same points in which they were at the beginning. This period is called the Platonic, or Great Year. SEE ASTRONOMY.

Firmament. In Scripture the Hebrew word denotes an expanse, a wide extent; the great arch or expanse over our heads, in which are placed the atmosphere and the clouds, and in which the stars appear to be placed, and are really seen.

The Hebrew word rakia (רקיע) stands for firmament, i.e. the space in which the stars are set (Gen 1:7-8). Our interpretation of the word is derived from the Greek στερέωμα, through the Latin firmamentum. It means that which is fixed and steadfast, rather than that which is solid. The word once occurs in the N.T., namely, in Col 2:5, ’The steadfastness (στερέωμα) of your faith in Christ;’ and other forms of the root are used in the same way. The application of this word to the heavenly bodies is simple and beautiful; they are not fickle and uncertain in their movements, but are regulated by a law which they cannot pass over. ’ by the word of the Lord were the heavens made (ἐστερεώθησαν), and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth’ (Psa 33:6). ’I have made the earth, and created man up on it: I, even my hands, have stretched out (ἐστερέωσα) the heavens, and all their host have I commanded’ (Isa 45:12). ’Mine h and also hath laid the foundation of the earth, and my right h and hath spanned (ἐστερέωσε) the heavens’ (Isa 48:13).

The Hebrew word is derived from rake, to spread out. this verb is found in Job 37:18, ’Hast thou with him spread out the sky, which is strong, and as a molten looking-glass?’ Psa 136:6, ’To him that stretched out the earth above (or over) the waters;’ Isa 42:5, ’He that spread forth the earth;’ 44:24, ’That spreadeth abroad the earth by myself.’

The firmament, then, is that which is spread or stretched out--hence an expanse; and this is the rendering received by many at the present time. Perhaps, guided partly by this usage of the Hebrew word, and partly by the rendering of the LXX, we may attach two ideas to the term, namely, extension and fixity, or (to combine them in one) fixed space. The interplanetary spaces are measured out by God, and, though the stars are ever moving, they generally preserve fixed relative positions; their movements are not erratic, not in straight lines, but in orbits, and thus, though ever changing, they are always the same.

The Hebrew word is raqia , signifying ’expanse.’ It is used for the celestial sphere that may be seen by looking upward, and also simply for the atmosphere in which the birds fly. We read that God called the firmament ’heaven:’ this is ’heaven’ in a broad sense as we read elsewhere of ’the stars of heaven,’ but also of ’the birds of heaven.’ Gen 1:6-20. The Psalmist speaks of them as distinct: "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handywork." Psa 19:1; Psa 150:1. The living creatures in Ezek. 1 move amidst the firmament: "and the likeness of the firmament upon the heads of the living creature was as the colour of the terrible crystal, stretched forth over their heads above" (Eze 1:22), showing them to be executors of God’s judicial government: cf. Eze 10:1.

See COSMOGONY.

FIRMAMENT.—See Creation.

(Latin: firmamentum, support)

The vault of the heavens. The idea of firmness in the sky is due to the Hebrew word which stresses the notions of solidity and expanse. The biblical narrative, which describes the physical universe in a popular way, shows the firmament to be a strong ceiling that divides the waters above from those below; it serves, too, as a support for the heavenly bodies (Genesis 1).

(Sept. stereoma; Vulgate, firmamentum).The notion that the sky was a vast solid dome seems to have been common among the ancient peoples whose ideas of cosmology have come down to us. Thus the Egyptians conceived the heavens to be an arched iron ceiling from which the stars were suspended by means of cables (Chabas, LÆAntiquiteÆ historique, Paris, 1873, pp. 64-67). Likewise to the mind of the Babylonians the sky was an immense dome, forged out of the hardest metal by the hand of Merodach (Marduk) and resting on a wall surrounding the earth (Jensen, Die Kosmologie der Babylonier, Strasburg, 1890, pp. 253, 260). According to the notion prevalent among the Greeks and Romans, the sky was a great vault of crystal to which the fixed stars were attached, though by some it was held to be of iron or brass. That the Hebrews entertained similar ideas appears from numerous biblical passages. In the first account of the creation (Genesis 1) we read that God created a firmament to divide the upper or celestial from the lower or terrestrial waters. The Hebrew word means something beaten or hammered out, and thus extended; the Vulgate rendering, ôfirmamentumö corresponds more closely with the Greek stereoma (Septuagint, Aquila, and Symmachus), ôsomething made firm or solidö. The notion of the solidity of the firmament is moreover expressed in such passages as Job, xxxvii, 18, where reference is made incidentally to the heavens, ôwhich are most strong, as if they were of molten brassö. The same is implied in the purpose attributed to God in creating the firmament, viz. to serve as a wall of separation between the upper and lower of water, it being conceived as supporting a vast celestial reservoir; and also in the account of the deluge (Genesis 7), where we read that the ôflood gates of heaven were openedö, and shut upö (viii, 2). (Cf. also IV 28 sqq.) Other passages e.g. Is., xlii, 5, emphasize rather the idea of something extended: ôThus saith the Lord God that created the heavens and stretched them outö (Cf. Isaiah 44:24, and 40:22). In conformity with these ideas, the writer of Gen., i, 14-17, 20 represents God as setting the stars in the firmament of heaven, and the fowls are located beneath it, i.e. in the air as distinct from the firmament. On this point as on many others, the Bible simply reflects the current cosmological ideas and language of the time.----------------------------------- LeseÆtre in Vig., Dict. de la Bible, s. v.: Whitehouse in Hastings, Dict. of the Bible. s. v. Cosmogony, I, 502. JAMES F. DRISCOLL Transcribed by William J. Rosini In memory of Dorothy and Evoldo Rosini The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VICopyright © 1909 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, September 1, 1909. Remy Lafort, CensorImprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York

fûr´ma-ment. See ASTRONOMY. III, 3.