The first place where the concept of "windows" appear is the flood story.
#FIRMAMENT IN HEBREW WINDOWS#
Attempts to translate it as "strip of metal" fall as flat as the attempts to link some sort of hardness in order to match the Hebrew concept with the upper half of Tiamat's body that became the sky in Babylonian mythology.Īs for the windows of Heaven, presumably to let in starlight and rain, the creation story never mentions them as such. Raqia' is used also in Ezekiel 1 and 10 where it means an extended platform or an expanse on which the throne of God is situated.
It is simply an "extended surface" or "expanse." The idea of firmness arises from the Vulgate translation of firmamentum and the Septuagint translation of steroma. 1 In the first place, nowhere does the Bible imply that the raqia' is solid or firm. Laird Harris has shown that each step in this diagram depends more on the scholars' ingenuity than on Scripture. 1 Samuel 2:8 Job 9:6), which stretched up past the underworld and the "deep." The whole flat earth and solid firmament were supported by pillars (e.g. They talk (usually with diagrams) as if the Bible shows a flat earth ( Isaiah 11:12 and Revelation 20:8), capped allegedly with a solid firmament ( Genesis 1:7-8 and elsewhere), which was appropriately outfitted with windows in the solid sphere over the top of the earth ( Genesis 7:11 8:2 2 Kings 7:2 Isaiah 24:18 et al). They did not have cathedrals 3,500 years ago but palaces or temples with vaulted ceilings were known to Sumerian/Babylonian and Egyptian architecture so is it likely the original audience would have understood the image that God was using perhaps to inspire to His people who had just left Egypt (and may have built some of those same type ceilings)? Or did they truly believe a fixed, solid expanse existed and God simply spoke to them in the vernacular of their day?Įven though many scholars and resources link the Bible's view of the cosmos with other ancient cosmologies, the evidence in the Bible for this is lacking. Today we might poetically compare the sky to the ceiling of a cathedral. I contend that sometimes the language in the Bible is poetic and we must be careful to not to take things literally that are not meant to be taken that way. So, why does the text seem to indicate some kind of support for the rain or a background to which the stars are pasted? I don't believe the Hebrews considered the sky to be a solid thing holding up the waters (or the stars). However, one can can see the same word raqiya used in Dan 12:3 where it obviously does indicate the sky. Strong's suggests the word means something akin to a vaulted ceiling. Just two verses later, we see that God calls the firmament shamayim, which is to say the visible heavens or "sky". It separates the waters below (oceans, lakes, rivers, etc) from the waters above (where the rain comes from). In Genesis 1:6, the word "firmament" (Hebrew: raqiya) is referring to what we call the sky.
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