And God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters, to separate the waters from the waters.”
The Hebrew word means expanse, not firmament; I confess the Greek and Latin translators chose otherwise, perhaps thinking of the heavens as crystalline and solid. Yet the plain sense is an empty space stretched out to separate waters above from waters below, keeping heaven and earth distinct, a distinction Scripture counts as essential order.
AI summary
The firmament is not a wall that shuts heaven off from earth but a way of intercourse between them. God appointed the air to be the vehicle of light's beams and the medium by which the invisible world communicates with the visible, spanning that vast distance yet leaving passage open.
AI summary
Commenting on Genesis 1:6-8
This expanse or stretched-out curtain is the air itself, divided into regions from earth to the third heaven, wherein fowls fly and stars are set. The word denotes both the firmness and extent of what God made, firm and lasting, reaching from earth through all the atmosphere and ether where light and heavenly bodies dwell.
AI summary