This is the second in a series of seven posts where I share my thoughts about my song Creation and the story in the first chapter of Genesis.
“On the next day God took the water high
He split it up and He made it dry
It’s a great expanse that He called the sky
With water low and water high
So the second day God made the sky
The water split so the firmament’s dry
And the first day God made the heavens and earth
Split the dark and light in the universe
And to mark the time there was morning and evening
And He saw that it was good”
The first time I performed this song for my family, my youngest daughter immediately asked “What is a firmament?” I didn’t have a good way to explain it to her. The easiest way to describe it is to say it’s “the sky”. That doesn’t really give a full explanation of what the people who originally told this story meant when they referred to the firmament. This term goes back to the days when scholars believed that the world was flat. They also believed that the sun, moon and stars were embedded in a dome that went over the earth. In this creation story, the heavenly bodies weren’t made until the fourth day. According to this scripture, they also believed there was water above this dome. From the understanding of the universe at that time, it makes perfect sense that a “firmament” would be the next thing to be made. God has to do a lot with all of the water in this story to get the earth to the state that we are familiar with. Creating a sky over the earth would be the perfect next step for getting all of the water away from the earth.