Day 2 of the restoration starts with Genesis 1:6, “And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” Again, as in verse 3, “God” is Elohim, indicating all three members of the Godhead; “said” is amar, third person singular, the Father is speaking; and “let” is hajah, the qal imperfect, a simple command to existing elements and not a creative act.
“Firmament” is raqia, the expanse of the sky or atmosphere. The atmosphere is a gaseous compound made up of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, helium, neon and several other lesser gases. It is essential to life and determines climate, changing weather patterns and somewhat protects life forms on earth today by filtering out some harmful radiation.
And while we’re talking about the atmosphere, it’s important to understand that what the “global warming” (now called “climate change”, since it’s apparent we have not been in a warming trend for several years) crowd calls harmful greenhouse gases is actually an essential trace element in our atmosphere called carbon dioxide. Global warming (or climate change) is a hoax based on bad science, and has not been embraced by reputable climatologists. Both history and current, honest evaluations of our atmosphere and climatic conditions prove that man is not capable of destroying what God has designed and created.
I should mention here that since I wrote this several years ago, and since evidence has not supported either “global warming” or “climate change”; some have begun to reference this hoax as “severe weather patterns”. The problem here, of course, is that severe weather has always existed. In addition, some alarmists are beginning to say we have only a few years to implement their measures to correct the problem or reach the point of no return and destroy the earth and all life.
At this point, remember, God is preparing the earth to be inhabited again. This preparation must include the removal of a large quantity of water from the earth’s surface so there can be dry land. So, Genesis 1:7 says, “And 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.”
“Made” is asah, “to make from existing materials”, again, not a creative act. Here, God divides the waters that were on the surface of the earth, placing some of it above the atmosphere creating a thick cloud canopy over the earth, and putting some of it both on the surface and some under the surface of the earth. The result of this action is described in several other places. For instance, waters above the firmament (Psalms 148:4, 7) and waters both above and below the firmament (Genesis 7:11, 8:2).
Then, Genesis 1:8 says, “And God called the firmament heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.” And at this point it might be helpful to jump ahead to Genesis 2:4-6 to better understand the history of the earth’s atmosphere. This is a corrected translation of that passage. “This has been an account of the creation of the vast expanse of the universe and of the earth, and of the time when God restored the earth and the atmosphere, placed mature plants (trees that had not begun as seeds in the soil) in the field, and mature herbs (edible plants that had not grown from seed) when there was not yet a man to plant them. And the Lord God had not yet caused it to rain on the ground; but instead, there was a dew which came up from the earth every day and watered all the surface of the ground.”
This passage alludes to the original creation of the heavens and earth and then to the first three days of the restoration. I’m jumping ahead a little (day 3 will be covered next in lesson 10), but now is a good time to look at this because of what this passage says in verses 5 and 6 regarding the atmosphere. It describes the act of God forming a thick cloud canopy around the earth. This produced high humidity and a relatively constant, moderate range of temperatures. When the temperature at night cooled and reached dew point (and it did not have to cool much, because of the high humidity), the moisture in the air would condense, causing a heavy dew to form on the surface of the ground much like a light rain every morning.
This also explains the extremely long life spans of those who lived during the Antediluvian Age (a period of approximately 1665 years from the restoration of the earth to Noah’s flood), when it was not unusual for people to live 800 to 900 years. Time is not the only factor in aging; nutrition and exposure to radiation are also important. The cloud canopy protected those on the earth from Adam to Noah from harmful radiation. It was only when God again collapsed this canopy to cause Noah’s flood that man’s life span was shortened to the three score and ten years of Psalm 90:10. By the way, do you realize Noah was the first man to see blue sky?