Firmament

In biblical cosmology, the firmament is a vast solid dome, created by God on the second day of creation, which divides the primal “waters” into upper and lower portions. The word is found in the King James Version, Tyndale, Douay-Rheims, and other early English translations of the Bible. Today it survives as a synonym for "heaven". In English, the word "firmament" is recorded as early as 1250, in the Middle English Story of Genesis and Exodus. It later appeared in the King James Bible. The same word is found in French and German Bible translations, all from Latin firmamentum (a firm object), used in the Vulgate (4th century). This in turn is a calque of the Greek στερέωμᾰ (), 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. These words all translate the Biblical Hebrew word rāqīaʿ (), used for example in Genesis 1.6, where it is contrasted with shamayim (), translated as "heaven(s)" in Genesis 1.1. Rāqīaʿ derives from the root rqʿ (), meaning "to beat or spread out thinly". 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. "(flat) expanse (as if of ice), as base, support", and 2. "the vault of heaven, or 'firmament,' regarded by Hebrews as solid and supporting 'waters' above it." A related noun, riqquaʿ (), found in Numbers 16.38 (Hebrew numbering 17.3), refers to the process of hammering metal into sheets. Gerhard von Rad explains: Blockquote|text=Rāqīaʿ means that which is firmly hammered, stamped (a word of the same root in Phoenecian means "tin dish"!). The meaning of the verb rqʿ concerns the hammering of the vault of heaven into firmness (Isa. 42.5; Ps.136.6). The Vulgate translates rāqīaʿ with firmamentum, and that remains the best rendering.