I recently gave a seminar at my high school. I’m going to reproduce it as a series here. A couple of necessary comments: 1) I only used sparse notes for the seminar, so I’m going to do my best to write this as a “transcript” of the talk. 2) Most of this content is pulled directly from the work of Theopolis: James Jordan, Peter Leithart, and Alistair Roberts. A more in-depth video series on the topic can be found here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZVU5W7G_m6iEHqj4k-1N7MYajT21CJCs
As I Tell My Students Every Day: “We’re Gonna Have Fun Today” (Part 2 here)
6 Then God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” 7 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. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day. (Genesis 1:6-8)
It is debated what the word “firmament” means, but the general idea is that it is both hard—so that the waters above cannot get through—and flexible such that it can be “rolled up like a scroll” (Revelation 6:14). If there existed some genetic experiment in which we could combine the properties of a sheet of ice and heavy duty tinfoil, this would be close.
I admit that the idea of waters below and waters above confused me for most of my life. I was like the GIF of the confused older lady and all the math equations circling her head. But what God is giving us here is actually quite coherent, despite what more modern, Western minds might think. You could draw it like this:
(“Jim, I’m a theologian, not a free-hand illustrator!”)
So why is the sky blue? Because the sky is a vaulted dome with waters resting on it.
You might be thinking, as one of my students blurted it out, “No it’s not!” And you’re right, but only from one perspective. It’s like waking up early and looking to the East to see the sun. You, innocently enough, point to the sky and say, “Look, the sun is rising!” And your snobby scientist friend right next to you says, “No it’s not. The earth is rotating.” You’re both right. From the level of sense-experience the sun rises; from the perspective of astronomical mechanics, the world turns. Here is why the symbolic/typological method and the scientific method often seem to be completely contradictory to each other but are in reality not: The symbolic method contends that God designed the physics of the universe in such a way that we would learn about Him through our sense-experience of the world. People coming from a modern scientific viewpoint often say that the symbolic method is wrong because the world does not work the way the symbols say it does; the sun doesn’t rise in the East. But I contend, “Doesn’t it?”
What’s with the Waters above the Firmament?
The waters above the firmament is the sea in front of God’s throne. (Don’t worry, I’ll prove it). Up until Genesis 1:8, all we have is the spiritual heavens, God’s heavens. The physical heavens, which we know of as the sky, has not been created yet. The spiritual heavens are God’s throne room: “Thus says the Lord: ‘Heaven is My throne, And earth is My footstool’” (Isaiah 66:1). We know that there is a sea in these heavens because John was given a vision of heaven and records it for us in Revelation. Revelation 4:6 says, “Before the throne there was a sea of glass, like crystal.” The fact that the sea is glass probably refers more to its clarity than its composition, but it also could be resonating the idea that the firmament is hard. This sea is clear to God; He sees all that is going on in the earth. [And one really cool point that I had not known when I gave my lecture is that between the throne and the sea are the seven lamps of fire, which represent the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit flutters like flame above the waters in heaven (Revelation 4:5).]
Now the next point of evidence is what sealed the symbolic interpretation of the firmament for me, and so all of Genesis 1. In Exodus 24, Moses and the elders head up Mt. Sinai to eat with God. What they saw is extraordinary:
9 Then Moses went up, also Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, 10 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 [the sky firmament] in its clarity. 11 But on the nobles of the children of Israel He did not lay His hand. So they saw God, and they ate and drank. 12 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Come up to Me on the mountain and be there; . . . (Exodus 24:9-12)
Moses and the elders catch a view of God. They are somewhere on the middle of the mountain and looking up. We know this because Moses is later called by God to “Come up” to Him, which would seem to be higher than where they were. So they are looking up through this sapphire pavement that is absolutely clear, but the adjective sapphire lets us know that it has a bluish tint. They are looking through the firmament, the very heavens, the waters above, which are before the throne of God. 1
And so the firmament is a barrier between God and man in some sense. Theologian Peter Leithart notes that Day 2 of creation is the only day that God does not declare good. Leithart reasons that this is perhaps because this was not God’s final intended state, the state where God dwells freely with man (Leviticus 26:11-12). In fact, in the final chapters of Revelation we see God’s throne breaking through the firmament and coming down to be with mankind.
Regardless, we have the firmament, the sky, created on Day 2. But then something strange happens: God calls the firmament heaven. (Actually he calls it, literally, heavens. The noun is always plural in Hebrew.) This is probably the first element of direct symbolism in the Bible. By His naming of it, God wants us to look at the sky and think, “That is where God dwells.” He creates the physical universe after the pattern of heaven just as Moses was instructed to make the tabernacle (Exodus 25:40; Hebrews 8:5). So when your child turns to you and asks, “Why is the sky blue?” tell them, “It is blue because the sky holds up the waters in heaven that are before God’s throne, but one day, the sky will break, and God’s throne will come to earth, and there will no longer be a separation between God and humans. And so shall it be forever.”
A personal speculation here is that this heavenly sea is filled by the river that runs from His throne: “And [the angel] showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb” (Revelation 22:1).