The Firmament of Genesis 1

0:00Before we were arguing over flat earth versus round earth, before we were arguing over creation versus evolution, before we were arguing over whether Tom Holland has surpassed Toby McGuire as the best portrayal of Spider-Man. There was another debate raging within the church, did God create the earth with a canopy around it, like a dome or a protective shield? Now perhaps you've never heard about this, but it centers around the mysterious Firmament that comes up in Genesis 1, verses 6 and 7. The New King James Version says, then God said, let there be a Firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. Thus God made the Firmament and divided the waters which were under the Firmament from the waters which were above the Firmament and it was so. So what even is a Firmament? The American Dictionary says a Firmament is the Vault of Heaven. The British Dictionary says it's the expanse of the sky. Now I don't quite know what all that means, and to be honest,

1:00I find it to be weird, and all I really care is what the Bible says it is. If you want to find out too, turn to Genesis 1, and let's get weird. Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing, or just plain weird. This is Luke Taylor, and today we're going to be talking about the Firmament of Genesis 1. I don't think I need to spend a lot of time on the Spider-Man question. I mean, I love Toby, I love Andrew Garfield, I love the Miles Morales movie from a few years ago, but I mean, Tom Holland, that's where it's at. Are we all on the same page about that now? Okay, good. Then let's talk Firmament today. Now first, a quick story. As I shared a few months ago, I had a surgery over the summer. This was just a hernia repair on my upper thigh, and so I had a series of doctor's appointments that were leading up to the surgery. One time the doctor examined me for about 10 minutes,

2:04he took some notes, handed them off to a nurse, and then charged me a bunch of money. I mean, you know how it goes. Turns out those notes got uploaded to the patient portal, and I got a little curious, and I went and looked to see what he had written about me. And I was a little bit surprised at what he said whenever he thought I wasn't looking. He said, and this is a direct quote from the paperwork, he said, nose and ears appear grossly normal. Okay, grossly normal. That is what he called my nose. That is what he called my ears grossly normal. I mean, he might as well have added boom roasted on the end of my medical charts. Well doc, sorry to discuss you with my average everyday ears. I mean, I didn't even think we were there to talk about my nose or my ears, but you know, if your ears are grossly normal, I guess it's better to know than to not know. And I was just coming to terms with this new revelation about myself, and I went into the living room and I told my wife what I had seen. She said, well, actually in the medical field, the word

3:09grossly can mean examined without the aid of a microscope. Oh, okay, well, that puts a little bit different spin on things. Okay, people in the medical field have a little bit different vocabulary for some things. That's good to know. Grossly simply means that the doctor looked at my nose and my ears without a microscope, and he was able to declare them normal based on visual confirmation alone. And frankly, I'm kind of glad he didn't stick a microscope in my nose or my ears as that would have been grossly gross. My point is sometimes people use code words. They have their own unique definitions that they're working off of how to talk about things. Words that could mean one thing in one context and something unfamiliar in another context. And as we've often discussed on this podcast, the Bible has a number of code words of its own. Words that can have an ordinary meaning. And they might even make sense in an ordinary way, but they can also have a second or spiritual meaning and point to a spiritual reality. And scripture does this more often than we

4:15think. We've often talked about the phrase beast of the field, how it's a code word for spiritual beings. We've talked about how the sea is a code word for the underworld. Recently, we talked about how the waters of creation and the first chapter of Genesis actually, let's just start with that for today. Let's recap that. So let's go back to the beginning. Genesis 1, I'm going with the new King James version on today's episode of the podcast. And Genesis 1 begins with these words. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void. And darkness was on the face of the deep. And the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Now, what are these waters that it speaks of? Well, back in July, I did an episode and I called it the three realms of God's creation. And I explained my view of what these waters are. The waters just means all the stuff that God would use to form the rest of creation. Now, you could think of this as atoms. I'm not saying it was all just literally atoms. Okay, I just think atoms ATOMS, it's probably

5:17the best approximation of what was going on. God created everything. The world was covered in a sea of atoms or the building blocks of matter. And everything started in a state of chaos because it was all unformed and disorganized. So the sea of atoms here is called the waters. And I think that's just a really good code word the Bible uses to describe it because water is a substance that has no shape. Okay, water is just a formless liquid, formless. And the earth was without form. So I don't think the earth was literally just covered with water. I just think the word water here is kind of a code word for something else. I mean, you can call it atoms. You could call it building blocks. Maybe it's a spiritual substance that we just don't even have a word for. But God began to take these building blocks and started to build with them. God used them to build the things of this world. The mountains, the hills, the dirt, the planet. And God took this material and he used it to create

6:20the rest of the universe as well. And so Genesis 1, 6 through 8 talks about this. Then God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and let it divide the waters from the waters. Thus God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so. And God called the firmament heaven. And so now we have this firmament. And that's what we're mostly going to focus on today. The firmament divides the waters from the waters. The waters below from the waters above. The materials of earth will emerge from the waters below and the waters above will be used to create the things of space. And so what is this mysterious firmament that we see right here? Well, it's the Hebrew word Rakyah. And it only shows up in Genesis, Psalms, Ezekiel, and the Book of Daniel. It's a total of 17 times in the Bible. And so we're going to look at all of those places today and get a comprehensive

7:22understanding of what the firmament is. Now there are theories on what this firmament is. There are some who will tell you that this is a physical barrier kind of like a dome that surrounds the earth. And this is a very popular idea in the flat earth or crowd. They say that this dome even still exists to this day. Then there are others who believe that there was a physical barrier around the earth at the time of creation, but that it broke at the time of the flood of Noah and that then it released the waters above. And that is what caused the earth to be filled with water. Part of that reason is because the English word firmament, it carries this idea of firmness. And so it's understandable why some would think that this implies that there's some kind of physicality to the firmament. And also it comes from the Latin firmamentum and that actually means it carries the idea that it's something fixed. It's not necessarily something firm but something fixed. But the idea of the firmament as a solid thing that is not necessary in the definition of Rakyah

8:27in the original Hebrew. And indeed, you don't have to interpret or translate this word as firmament. Some of the more modern translations will call it the expanse. And so here's another way that you could look at it. That the firmament is just another word for the heavens. And it's kind of how it sounds in the eighth verse. Genesis 1, 8, and God called the firmament heaven. So you could look at the word firmament as just a synonym for the heavens, everything beyond the earth, from the atmosphere to Pluto to the distant stars to infinity and beyond. The only problem with that view is that the Bible itself doesn't use that word consistently in that way in the 17 times where it shows up. So let's just unpack all of that today and we'll start by surveying the word firmament throughout the Bible. So we will start with Genesis 1 and this is where you see the most instances of the word firmament. So throughout Genesis 1, the firmament here, it just sounds

9:28kind of like outer space. Okay, this is what the Bible would refer to as the heavens. Genesis 1, 14, 3, 18, then God said, let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night and let them be for signs and seasons and for days and years and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth and it was so. Then God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, this was the sun, and the lesser light to rule the night, this was the moon, he made the stars also. God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth and to rule over the day and over the night and to divide the light from the darkness and God saw that it was good. So right here we see the firmament described as the place where the sun and the moon and the stars would reside. Furthermore, verse 20 has this added word when it talks about it. Then God said, let the waters abound within abundance of living creatures and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens. This is the only time

10:33the word firmament shows up with a qualifier here. It says the face of whenever it's describing it. So it says birds will fly across the face of the firmament of the heavens. That means the birds are not in the firmament. They fly in front of it. So you don't see the word firmament come up again until you get to the book of Psalms. And that is where this word will appear two times. Psalm 19 uses it in a way that correlates perfectly with Genesis 1. If we just think of the firmament of as outer space or the heavens that are beyond the earth, Psalm 191 says the heavens declares the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork. The other place where you see this word show up is in the 150th Psalm. It's the very last Psalm. Psalm 150 verse 1 says, praise the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary. Praise him in his mighty firmament. So that doesn't tell us anything about where it is. But you could look at it as saying that like we should praise the Lord from the earth to the heavens. And then I'm going to skip over the book of

11:37Ezekiel for a minute. Let's go right to Daniel. We see this word show up one time in that book. Once again, equating the firmament with the heavens, Daniel 12, 3, those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament and those who turn many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever. So believers are said to shine like the stars, which are paralleled with the firmament, which is outer space. So there's not anything in the description of the firmament from Genesis, Psalms or Daniel that would imply any physicality to this firmament as being a dome-like structure or a canopy. Now, again, I know that some believe this firmament, it may have been cracked or broken, and then it released a bunch of water upon the earth in Genesis 7, that's where the flood is. The problem with that view is that the firmament is never mentioned in that chapter. It says the windows of heaven are opened, but it doesn't say anything about a firmament being broken.

12:37And of course, from the Psalms and Daniel references, we see that the firmament is still there after the flood. So from all those references, we have a pretty clear picture of what the firmament is. It's everything from the atmosphere and beyond. The birds fly in the face of the atmosphere, but they don't go beyond the atmosphere. It's not until you look at this word in Ezekiel that things start to get more complicated in how we define this thing. So, real quick, let me revisit my view of Genesis 1. I outlined it in that episode I mentioned before, the three realms of God's creation. I think Genesis 1 is pulling double duty by simultaneously talking about God's creation of the physical realm and God's creation of the spiritual realm. Genesis 1 describes the creation of the physical realm as being in three parts. There's the heaven and the earth and the sea. However, my contention in that episode was that these three parts correspond to the three parts of the spiritual realm. The heavens correspond to the heavenly realm,

13:41where God rules, the earth corresponds to the earthly realm, that's where we are and we're Satan rules, and then the sea corresponds to the underworld realm. And so therefore, on this view, there is a firmament in the physical realm. However, there's also a firmament in the spiritual realm, and the spiritual firmament is what I believe that we see in the book of Ezekiel. So, this is going to be a bit more nuanced of a view of the firmament than perhaps what you've heard before. When I say nuance, it's like when people say Tom Holland is the best Peter Parker, but Andrew Garfield was the best spider man. Okay, that's a bit more nuanced take than simply asking which actor had the best portrayal. And not everybody is ready for that conversation. I want to have a little bit deeper conversation about the firmament as we look at it here in Ezekiel. So, turn with me to Ezekiel 1, if you're following along in your Bible, in Ezekiel 1, and also in Ezekiel 10, these are the chapters where Ezekiel has a vision of God and he sees the forefaced

14:46cariboum. These are spiritual beings who have four phases. They have the face of a lion, an ox, a man, and an eagle. And it's really, really weird. I talked about them back in Episode 57. So, for most of this chapter, Ezekiel is describing this vision. He was sitting on the side of a hill. Suddenly, there was this whirlwind from the north, but only he could see it. The cariboum come out first. There are four of them, and they each have four faces. They're on these whirling wheels, and they sound kind of gyroscopic in their design. And each cariboum has a will underneath it. So, the cariboum are moving around on these wheels, and then they also seem to be supporting the throne of God. So, Ezekiel 1, 22 through 26, it says, the likeness of the firmament above the heads of the living creatures was like the color of an awesome crystal stretched out over their heads. And under the firmament, their wings spread out straight one toward another. Each one had two which covered one side, and each one had two which

15:49covered the other side of the body. When they went, I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of many waters, like the voice of the Almighty, a tumult, like the voice, or like the noise of an army. And when they stood still, they let down their wings. A voice came from above the firmament that was over their heads. Whenever they stood, they let down their wings. Verse 26, and above the firmament over their heads was the likeness of a throne in appearance like a sapphire stone. On the likeness of the throne was a likeness with the appearance of a man high above it. There's a lot of prepositional phrases there. And I've studied Ezekiel 1 before, and they'll say that the Hebrew here is really kind of strange. It's like Ezekiel was out of breath as he was scribbling this down just in a panic almost. So, it's not even very articulate compared to other parts of his book. But just to kind of recap this here. So, it says the caribum, these four spiritual beings, some call them angels, that's fine. The caribum are supporting a firmament. And this is obviously

16:52not a huge canopy that encircles the whole earth. This is more like a platform. And on the platform is the throne of God. Now, the firmament is said to be like crystal in verse 22. And then sapphire is mentioned in verse 26. Sapphire is a blue crystal, blue like the sky. So keep that in mind. It's a beautiful stone. The last time the firmament is mentioned is when Ezekiel has a similar vision in chapter 10 verse 1. It says, and I looked in there in the firmament that was above the head of the caribum. There appeared something like a sapphire stone having the appearance of the lightness of a throne. So, now we've actually covered every firmament appearance in the scriptures. We have, what I believe is the firmament of the physical realm, which is the heavens, and the firmament of the spiritual realm, which is kind of like this platform for God's throne. Now, I know this is confusing because the spiritual firmament has a physicality to it. And so you might say, well, Luke,

17:57how can it be physical if this is a spiritual object? And if that is your question, I would say that is a good question, but I think I also have a good answer. When something is spiritual, that does not mean that it doesn't have a physicality to it. Angels have physicality. Jesus' spiritual resurrection body has a physicality to it. So whenever we say it's spiritual, what we mean by that is that it comes from the spiritual realm. Spirits are not just vapors and ghosts. Spirits can manifest physically. So what we see in Ezekiel 1 and Ezekiel 10 is that when God descends from heaven to earth and whenever God enters our realm, a piece of the firmament is lowered. Now, it's physical and his throne rests upon it. Now, I believe that we see this in a couple other places of the Bible as well, even though the word firmament will not appear right here. So before we wrap things up, I just want to connect these potential dots. And I think it gives us a

18:59bit of a clue as to how things work in the spiritual realm. In Exodus 24, Moses is conversing with God on Mount Sinai. And in this section of Exodus, it's where Moses keeps going up and down on this mountain there and he's receiving instruction from God. It includes the 10 commandments. And when you get to the 24th chapter, God tells Moses to bring his brother Aaron along with 70 elders of Israel to go up with him on the mountain. And all of these people will witness God on his throne. So Exodus 24, 9 and 10, then Moses went up also Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and 70 of the elders of Israel. And they saw the God of Israel. And there was under his feet as it were, a paved work of Sapphire stone. And it was like the very heavens and its clarity. So very similar right here, a Sapphire stone. And it was like the heavens. And so it means that when Moses and the others looked at it, it was kind of like

19:59looking at the sky. When God sat on his throne, he was on some kind of platform. And it looked like he was sitting on a piece of the sky. Well, I believe that this is surely the same platform that Ezekiel was describing in his vision. Now, keep in mind, even though Moses and the others are up on this mountain, God is up in the sky. So he is still positioned higher than they are. Now, let's look at another place in Scripture where we see God's throne. And this is in John's vision in the book of Revelation. Revelation 4 verse 2. It says, immediately, I was in the spirit and behold a throne set in heaven. And one sat on the throne. I'll skip a few verses down to verse 6. It says, before the throne, there was a sea of glass like crystal. I want to compare a few other translations real quick here too. The NIV for this verse says also in front of the throne, there was what looked like a sea of glass clear as crystal. And the amplified version says it this way. And in

21:02front of the throne, there was something like a sea or large expanse of glass like the clearest crystal. So the idea is that before God's throne, there was a clear glass like crystal foundation. And that is what John is seeing. It was hard like crystal, but it was clear like the glass of a window. You could see through it below you. So the idea that I'm getting from putting this together is perhaps how things look in the spiritual realm. When God up in heaven is looking down at us, the ground before him is clear he can see right down into earth from heaven. Meanwhile, when we're looking up at God from below like Moses or like Ezekiel do, they see God sitting on a blue surface. It's blue like the sky and it's kind of like a two-way mirror. It's blue from our vantage point, but it's clear from God's vantage point from being up and looking down. Now, some people might say, look, these are just visions that you're talking about here. You can't take them so literally. And sure, I understand that. Like, I'm really just going off of how the bible

22:09presents these glimpses of the spiritual realm. I don't think that God literally has to look through a clear glass down from heaven to know what's going on here on earth. God might just know all things that are happening and all things that will happen just by virtue of being God. Okay, just like God might not literally need to sit in a chair, yet the bible often speaks about his throne. Like, I don't think God needs to sit down, but scripture depicts him sitting. I don't think God needs to rest, but scripture says he rested on the seventh day. So I don't take from that that God needs lazy boys and needs naps, but God is God and God can do whatever he wants to do. So I'm just going to interpret the scriptures as they come here. And if there's a clear sea of glass like crystal before his throne, I want to take it that that's what he's got there. Okay, now one more note I want to share on viewing things from a spiritual reality as opposed to an earthly reality. Revelation 4, John and C's very similar creatures to what Ezekiel saw in the first chapter

23:11of his book. It says whenever you read Revelation 4, 6 and 7, and in the midst of the throne and around the throne, there were four living creatures full of eyes and front and in back. The first living creature was like a lion, the second living creature like a calf, the third living creature had a face like a man, and the fourth living creature was like a flying eagle. And so I'll assume that you're familiar with Ezekiel's cariboum description. I didn't go into all of it earlier, but in Ezekiel 1 and 10 when he sees his vision of God, Ezekiel goes into a deep description of these creatures. And again, when Ezekiel describes them, they each have four faces. Their faces are a lion, an ox or a calf depending on the translation, a man and an eagle. So it's just like what John saw. Now when Ezekiel saw these four beings, he called them living creatures and each one of them had four different faces. When John sees these four beings, he calls them living creatures, but they each

24:12have one face. And that's really the only thing that's different from one vision to the other. So that's always kind of bothered me to be honest. I'm like, are these the same thing or are they two different kinds of creatures? Because they are described a little bit differently. The living creatures in Ezekiel 1, are they the same entities as the living creatures in Revelation 4? Well, here is a theory on that. Yes, they are the same, but they look a little bit different depending on your vantage point. So Ezekiel is a three-dimensional being looking at what is perhaps a four-dimensional creature. Okay? He's very freaked out by it. He sees all these faces on there. But when John sees these beings up in heaven, he is now in a four-dimensional space looking at a four-dimensional creature, and he just sees one face on each creature. So I would explain it like this. Imagine a two-dimensional cartoon person living in a two-dimensional world, and he's never even known about a third dimension. He probably couldn't even understand it.

25:16Couldn't comprehend it. So if a two-dimensional cartoon saw a three-dimensional being, then the cartoon guy is going to be quite overwhelmed by that. Okay? He'd be like, whoa, I never saw anything like that before. Like the way it turned and the way it kept changing, man, this was like nothing I'd ever seen. Okay? Like, you know, we know that a 3D being only has one face, but they can change their face. They can turn their heads and in a way that a two-d being could not, they couldn't even really comprehend it. So a two-dimensional being, he would not understand a three dimensional being. He could only, he could really only see glimpses of it at a time. He couldn't even see it all at once. Well, we've talked before about UFOs on this show and spiritual beings and how they seem to be higher-dimensional. Okay? We are 3D beings, perhaps looking at 4D things. So therefore, 3D Ezekiel sees these rotating wheels of eyeballs and 4D beings with faces,

26:19John, who was himself in the fourth dimension in Revelation 4, sees something similar. And I'm sure he's very fascinated by what he's seeing, but perhaps it's not quite as freaky. Okay? He only sees one face per creature where Ezekiel saw many. You know, it might be kind of like in that Spider-Man movie called Into the Spiderverse. It has a bunch of Spider-Man from different universes all coming together. So if you've seen that movie, when a Spider-Man is in the wrong dimension, he kind of like glitches out. He just flickers and gets all colorful and jittery because he's in the wrong place. And you know, it could be something similar of what's going on with these spiritual beings who come in from a different dimension. Just an idea, just a way to think about it that perhaps makes sense out of what Ezekiel was seeing. Because if you read Ezekiel's description of the cariboum in chapter 1 of his book, that is exactly how he describes them. They kind of flicker around like lightning. And so it's really interesting to me how much that movie kind of lines up with Ezekiel's vision when you think of this idea of being in the wrong dimension.

27:21So all of that, that's just my theory on what's going on. I'm just trying to put these pieces together. It, you know, it makes sense to me on how things might look different in heaven than they do whenever they appear on earth. And you know, just man, it is going to be so exciting whenever we do get to heaven and we can perceive a whole new dimension of reality, like the real reality, okay? Not this limited view that we live in now. So let's recap our main ideas for today. Point number one, I've always said that Tom Holland was the best portrayal of Spider-Man ever since homecoming. And I'm glad the rest of you are finally catching up to me. Point number two, the firmament and genesis. This is a general term that encompasses everything from the atmosphere to outer space. It is not one specific thing. Point number three, you definitely do not have to interpret the firmament as a shell or a canopy around the earth. Now, I understand why people interpret it that way in English. You could interpret it that way if you wanted to, but the Hebrew text does not

28:25force you to. And I would not interpret it that way based on what we know scientifically about the earth. And those three points, especially point number one, those are pretty easy to establish. And I would probably not take counter arguments to them very seriously, just to be honest. Two more points that I made today, which are more debatable, and these are more of my personal theory. Point number four, the firmament in Ezekiel is not the same as the firmament in Genesis 1. Ezekiel is showing us right there a spiritual firmament, a platform which God's thrown rests upon. Now, some are going to say, Luke, you can't do that with the word firmament. You can't say that the firmament in Ezekiel is something different from the firmament of Genesis 1. It's the same word in both places. And I get that because firmament is not a very common word. And so for some reason, like since it's such a rare word, we think it has to mean the same thing every time it shows up. But here's the thing about Genesis 1. There are several words that don't

29:30mean the same thing right there that they mean in the rest of the Bible. Words like water, stars, okay? Like water is not always physical water throughout the Bible. The word star can mean angel. The word heaven can have multiple meanings depending on the context. I would say heaven has multiple meanings even within Genesis 1 itself. I would argue that C is a code word there for the underworld. And that becomes very plain when you look at how Revelation speaks of the sea as well. So the Racheia in Genesis 1, it doesn't necessarily have to mean the same thing as the Racheia in Ezekiel 1. In fact, they seem very different and trying to make them equate each other just seems logically impossible. And then one more point from today, point number five, we cannot properly perceive higher dimensional beings, such as Kira Bim, from R3 dimensional space. Like if you could take a 2D being and turn them into a 3D being,

30:30just imagine how amazing that that would be for them. I know that's just an imaginary scenario. We can't really do that, but just like imagine for a moment that we did, okay? The 2D guy or girl, they would be able to perceive the world in a whole new way. It would blow his mind to look around and see things in a 3D atmosphere for the first time. Likewise, whenever we get to heaven, we are going to have such a deeper perception of reality. It's going to be awesome. First John 3, 2 says, Beloved, now we are children of God and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when he is revealed, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. You see, someday we will go from being 3D beings to experiencing and understanding a 4D reality and seeing God just as he is. And it will be amazing. It will be weird. And it will be normal,

31:31because we will perceive reality the way the angels, demons, and the living creatures perceive it. Right now we see through a glass darkly. What we see now is not normal. It is limited. It is incomplete, but someday in the spiritual realm, we will see all things as they actually are. So, if being 4D someday sounds weird, it will actually be normal. And I hope you are ready to be normal someday too. In fact, maybe you will even be grossly normal like me. Thanks for listening. God bless you for sticking around till the end. And we will see you next time on Weird Stuff in the Bible.