This is a good questions and one that you'll be hard pressed to get a straight answer on from many religious leaders. I have attempted to answer the question with scripture in this post.
The firmament has this definition:
In biblical cosmology, the firmament is the vast solid dome created by God on the second day to divide the primal sea into upper and lower portions so that the dry land could appear:
Then God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” (Gen. 1:6)
That is a very plain and clear definition of the word. It isn't until modern times that this particular word has taken on many different definitions that are a far cry from the original root word meaning.
The biggest problem for any “Bible believer” is dealing with Gen. 1:6. The FIRMament is the real deal breaker for our standard belief system. It’s either true or not. If it is, then Scripture is trustworthy and “science” and NASA are false. If the details of Creation are not true, then the entire Bible falls apart on a faulty foundation of lies. It’s that simple.
And you can’t just dismiss the FIRMament or grossly mangle the text into silly notions of it allegedly being just an “expanse” of air, gas, and the vacuum of space. The words used in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and English (and frankly every other language) absolutely do NOT support such a definition. To suggest otherwise is to willfully dismiss the scriptural facts.
Words mean things and nothing about the raqia (hebrew), stereoma (greek), firmamentum (latin), firmament (english) conveys any other meaning but that of a firm, SOLID structure that separates waters above from those below and upon which the throne of God sits. So you are literally forced to either accept or reject the FOUNDATION of God’s throne! That’s a big deal!!
Keep in mind now that we’ve only gotten to VERSE SIX of the first chapter of Scripture!! It gets significantly more difficult to ignore from there. An example is the fact that the Earth was created FOUR days BEFORE the sun ... which allegedly, according to science, we are hung on the gravity of the sun in order to produce our orbit. However, scripture tells us in Job 26:7 that:
He stretches out the north over empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing.
This tells us that Earth is hung on nothing, so therefore we cannot be "hung" on the gravity of the sun. Later in scripture we find exactly why we are hung on nothing. Psalm 104:5 states that:
The reason Earth is hung upon nothing is because it is set upon FOUNDATIONS ... never to be moved. This throws a huge kink in the spinning 1000 MPH, while orbiting the sun at 66,000 MPH, while blasting through space at 667,000 MPH model. That is a lot of movement for an Earth set upon foundations so that it can NOT move ...
The simple fact is that Holy Spirit inspired Scripture is NOT, in any way, compatible with the standard cosmological model. We must deal with this. Because trying to make it be compatible is to be dishonest with oneself and worse, with the text the Creator wanted written.
I will be digging deep into this topic in future posts. Please engage and ask questions. This is meant to be a discussion.
God bless you and your family.
I love this!!! It’s plain. If you take the scriptures for what they truly say then it’s easy to see.