![]() ![]() Perhaps beginning with Origen, the different identifiers used for heavens in the Book of Genesis, caelum and firmamentum, sparked some commentary on the significance of the order of creation ( caelum identified as the heaven of the first day, and firmamentum as the heaven of the second day). ![]() Gerhard von Rad Models of the Firmament The plurality of heaven The Vulgate translates rāqīaʿ with firmamentum, and that remains the best rendering. The meaning of the verb rqʿ concerns the hammering of the vault of heaven into firmness (Isa. Rāqīaʿ means that which is firmly hammered, stamped (a word of the same root in Phoenecian means "tin dish"!). "the vault of heaven, or 'firmament,' regarded by Hebrews as solid and supporting 'waters' above it." A related noun, riqquaʿ ( רִקּוּעַ), found in Numbers 16.38 (Hebrew numbering 17.3), refers to the process of hammering metal into sheets. "(flat) expanse (as if of ice), as base, support", and 2. The Hebrew lexicographers Brown, Driver and Briggs gloss the noun with "extended surface, (solid) expanse (as if beaten out)" and distinguish two main uses: 1. Rāqīaʿ derives from the root rqʿ ( רָקַע), meaning "to beat or spread out thinly". These words all translate the Biblical Hebrew word rāqīaʿ ( רָקִ֫יעַ), used for example in Genesis 1.6, where it is contrasted with shamayim ( שָׁמַיִם), translated as " heaven(s)" in Genesis 1.1. This in turn is a calque of the Greek στερέωμᾰ ( steréōma), also meaning a solid or firm structure (Greek στερεός = rigid), which appears in the Septuagint, the Greek translation made by Jewish scholars around 200 BCE. The same word is found in French and German Bible translations, all from Latin firmamentum (a firm object), used in the Vulgate (4th century). It later appeared in the King James Bible. ![]() In English, the word "firmament" is recorded as early as 1250, in the Middle English Story of Genesis and Exodus. Today it survives as a synonym for "sky" or "heaven". The concept was adopted into the subsequent Classical/Medieval model of heavenly spheres, but was dropped with advances in astronomy in the 16th and 17th centuries. In biblical cosmology, the firmament is the vast solid dome created by God during the Genesis creation narrative to divide the primal sea into upper and lower portions so that the dry land could appear. The sun, planets and angels and the firmament. ![]()
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