31 July 2022 *Navigate 'up' to the Genesis index: index-genesis.
The firmament in this verse is something solid. One doesn't even need to engage in Hebrew word-study to work this out. It is apparent from the internal logic of the Genesis 1 creation story. The vault (KJV "firmament"), in the biblical story, exists to divide the waters below it from the waters above it. There is an ocean above the sky in this cosmology, and the sky-vault holds it back.
For those who would have the creation of the firmament be simply the creation of the atmosphere, reading this in a creationist manner, there are a couple of problems. First, without an atmosphere, you couldn't have water on the earth anyhow, because it would have already boiled off. Second, the atmosphere clearly doesn't exist to separate the oceans from the water above the atmosphere, whatever that would refer to. Finally, the Flood story, in which the sky-vault fails and the water above comes raining down to return the world to chaos, requires a solid sky-vault.
Below is a note from S. R. Driver's commentary on Genesis, a note on 1:6, about the meaning of this term. I have adapted it slightly by doing things like expanding abbreviations to make it more readable. A facsimile of the whole commentary can be found here.
\6. "a firmament". Vulgate firmamentum, from the Septuagint's stereoma, that is, something made solid. The Hebrew is raqiaʿ, something pressed down firm, and so beaten out (the cognate verb means to stamp, Ezekiel 6:11; applied to metals, to beat out (Numbers 16:39; Jeremiah 10:9), figuratively of the earth, Isaiah 42:5, 44:24 [Revised Version spread abroad], Psalm 136:6), i.e. a firm and solid expanse[1] capable of supporting the masses of water confined above. The dome or canopy of heaven, which we, of course, know to be nothing but an optical illusion, was supposed by the Hebrews to be a solid vault (compare Job 37:18, "Canst thou like him beat out the skies, which are strong as a molten mirror?" and Proverbs 8:28a), supported far off by pillars resting upon the earth (Job 26:11; Amos 9:6; compare 2 Samuel 22:8)[2] : above this vault there were vast reservoirs of water, which came down, in time of rain, through opened sluices (v. 7, 7:11; Psalm 104:3 "who layeth the beams of his upper-chambers in the waters"; 13 "who watereth the mountains from his upper-chambers"; Amos 9:6 "who buildeth his upper-chambers in the heaven, and hath founded his vault upon the earth"); and above these waters Jehovah sat enthroned. The present verse shews how this was supposed to have been brought about. By the Divine word, a solid "firmament" was created, which separated the huge mass of primitive waters enveloping the earth into two parts, one being above the firmament, and the other below it.
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