What Does Genesis 1:8 Mean?
And God called the expanse Heavens. And there was evening, and there was morning, the second day.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.THE KEY
Heaven is named here as the expanse made within creation, so the word points to ordered space around you as well as to what lies beyond.
THE MEANING
You inhabit a world where the expanse between the waters has a name: Heaven. It belongs to the created order around you, not only to a far-off elsewhere. Evening gives way to morning, and the second day reaches its measure.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Heaven belongs only to a far-off elsewhere; here, it is also the name of an expanse within creation.
THE ROOT
הָרָקִיעַ
ha-raqia
GROWS FROM
רקע
r-q-ʿ
Beat out, spread, or extend a surface.
The word translated “firmament” comes from raqa, the language of beating or spreading something out into a broad surface. The expanse is named Heaven within the ordered world taking shape around it.
ALSO GROWS
raqa: To beat out or spread out.
רָקַע
This verb carries the action behind the expanse: making a broad surface.
riqqu'a: A beaten-out sheet or layer.
רִקּוּעַ
The related form preserves the sense of a surface extended through beating out.
וַיִּקְרָא
wayyiqra
GROWS FROM
קרא
q-r-ʾ
Call out, summon, proclaim, or name.
“called” in this verse is wayyiqra. The verse uses qara, a word that can mean calling out as well as naming. The expanse receives its identity through a spoken call, placing it within the world’s distinctions.
ALSO GROWS
qəri'ah: A calling or recitation.
קְרִיאָה
A spoken call makes something heard and recognizable, as the expanse is recognized by its name.
miqra: A public reading or assembly.
מִקְרָא
This related word carries the sense of a call that gathers or brings something into recognition.
THE PATTERN
Naming marks distinctions and gives each part of creation its place in the whole.
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening, and there was morning, the first day.He counts the number of the stars; he calls each of them by name.To him the gatekeeper opens, and the sheep hear and respond to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name, and leads them out.THE THREAD
Lift your eyes to the heights, and see who created these, who brings out their host by number. He calls them all by their nature, by the abundance of his strength, for he is firm in power; not one is lacking.Isaiah uses the same Hebrew root, qara, for calling the stars by name. The expanse called Heaven is part of a creation in which naming and ordering reach even the farthest lights.
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