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“And God said, ‘Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’ And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day” (Genesis 1:6–8).
Here we see a fourth technique: manufacturing something out of raw material that He had previously created. Whether God manufactured (“made”) by spoken command in addition to creating by spoken command is not immediately clear from this text. Another possibility is that God spoke the expanse into being from nothing, then further shaped or processed it to put it into its final form. All of these different techniques show us that God is in no way limited in His abilities. All in all, we should not try to be too exact in our interpretations of the processes used since they are far beyond human comprehension.
The expanse, (Hebrew: rawkeeah) is what we now call the sky. In verses 14 and 15 (day four), we see that God put the sun and moon in the rawkeeah, and in verse 20 (day five), we see that this expanse (rawkeeah) is the atmosphere in which birds fly. God also called the expanse Heaven. So Scripture uses heaven in three ways: It can mean the atmosphere. Heavens (plural) usually refers to what we now call outer space. And, of course, there is God’s Heaven to where His elect go when they leave this earth. The ancient Hebrews, like other ancient peoples, had their speculations concerning the nature and structure of the rawkeeah, but Scripture does not give this information. Also, there is no indication that the waters are not liquid water. This is significant since there is not yet a sun to warm the earth. This is completely contrary to any creation-by-chance theory, but perfectly consistent with a manufacturing operation.
This is the only day in which the text does not state that God saw that His work was good. Perhaps that is due to the relative incompleteness of the work of this day; there seem to have been no “final products” of this day.
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