The Pulpit Commentary - Genesis 1:7
And God made the firmament . How the present atmosphere was evolved from the chaotic mass of waters the Mosaic narrative does not reveal. The primary intention of that record being not to teach science, but to discover religious truth, the thing of paramount importance to be communicated was that the firmament was of God's construction. This, of course, does not prevent us from believing that the elimination of those gases (twenty-one parts of oxygen and seventy-nine of nitrogen, with a... read more
The Pulpit Commentary - Genesis 1:6
Day two . The work of this day consisted in the formation of that immense gaseous ocean, called the atmosphere, by which the earth is encircled. And God said, Let there be a firmament ( rakiya , an expand, from rakah , to beat out; LXX ; στερε ì ωμα ; Vulgate, firmamentum ) in the midst of the waters . To affirm with Knobel, Gesenius, and others that the Hebrews supposed the atmospheric heavens to be a metallic substance ( Exodus 24:10 ), a vault fixed... read more