![]() ![]() ![]() Further, the office of the rakia in the economy of the world demanded strength and substance. Re 4:6), is by no means inconsistent with its solidity. That the rakia should be transparent, as implied in the comparisons with the sapphire (Exodus 1. So again, in Eze 1:22-26, the " firmament" is the floor on which the throne. In Ex 24:10, it is poetically represented as a solid floor, "a paved work of a sapphire stone nor is the image much weakened if we regard the word לַבנִת as applying to the transparency of the stone rather than to the paving as in the A. But the same idea of solidity runs through all the references to the rakia. If the mist had penetrated the rakia it would have descended in the form of rains the mist, however, was formed under the rakia, and resembled a heavy dew-a mode of fructifying the earth which, from its regularity and quietude, was more appropriate to a state of innocence than rain, the occasional violence of which associated it with the idea of divine vengeance. But it should be observed that Ge 2:6 implies the very reverse. ii, 67) conceives that the ideas of solidity is inconsistent with Ge 2:6, which implies, according to him, the passage of the mist through the rakia he therefore gives it the sense of pure expansion-it is the large and lofty room in which the winds, etc. The sense of solidity, therefore, is combined with the ideas of expansion and tenuity is- the term rakia. in this sense that the term is applied to the heaven in Job 37:18,-" Hast thou spread (rather hammered) out the sky- which is strong, and as a molten looking-glass"-the mirrors to which hue refers being made of metal. It is thus applied to the flattened surface of the solid. It is especially used, however, of beating out metals into thin plates (Ex 39:3 Nu 16:39), and hence the substantive רַקֻּעַים "broad plates" of metal (Nu 16:38). The verb רָקִע, means to expand by beating, whether by the hand, the foot, or any instrument. c.) -but the true idea of the word is a complex one, taking in the mode by which the expansion is effected', sand consequently implying the nature of the material expanded. The Hebrew term is generally regarded as expressive of simple expansion, and is so rendered in the margin of the A. Vulgate, which- gives firmamentum as the equivalent of the στερἑωμα of the Sept. Firmament a term introduced into our language from the.
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