_shamayim_,"
but another signifying the _clouds_, so that we should regard Elihu as
speaking of the apparent firmness or stability, and the beautiful
reflected tints of the clouds. His words may be paraphrased thus:
"Hast thou aided Him in spreading out those clouds, which appear so
stable and self-sustaining, and so beautifully reflect the
sunlight?"[72] The above passages form the only authority which I can
find in the Scriptures for the doctrine of a solid firmament, which
may therefore be characterized as a modern figment of men more learned
in books but less acquainted with nature than the Scripture writers.
As a contrast to all such doctrines I may quote the sublime opening of
the poetical account of creation in Psalm civ., which we may also take
here as elsewhere as the oldest and most authoritative commentary on
the first chapter of Genesis:

"Bless the Lord, O my soul!
O Lord, my God, thou art very great:
Thou art clothed with honor and majesty,
Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment,
Who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain (of a tent),
_Who layest the beams of thy chambers in the waters,
Who makest the clouds thy chariots,
Who walkest upon the wings of the wind_."

The waters here are those above the firmament, the whole of this part
of the Psalm being occupied with the heavens; and there is no place
left for the solid firmament, of which the writer evidently knew
nothing. He represents God as laying his chambers on the waters,
instead of on the supposed firmament, and as careering in cloudy
chariots on the wings of the wind, instead of over a solid arch. For
all the above reasons, we conclude that the "expanse" of the verses
under consideration was understood by the writers of the book of God
to be _aerial_, not _solid_; and the "establishment of the clouds
above," as it is finely called in Proverbs, is the effect of those
meteorological laws to which I have already referred, and which were
now for the first time brought into operation by the divine
Legislator. The Hebrew theology was not of a kind to require such
expedients as that of solid heavenly arches; it recurred at once to
the will--the decree--of Jehovah; and was content to believe that
through this efficient cause the "rivers run into the sea, yet the sea
is not full," for "to the place whence the rivers came, thither they
return again," through the agency of those floating clouds, "the
waters above the heavens,