es, to any man who understands the English tongue.

No Hebrew speaking man or woman ever did, or ever could understand the
original Hebrew word _reqo_ in any other sense than that of _expanse_;
for the verb from which it is formed means to extend, or spread out, as
even the English reader may see, by a few examples of its use, in the
following passages of Scripture; where the English words by which the
verb _reqo_ is expressed, are marked in italics. "Then did I beat them
small as the dust of the earth, and did stamp them as the mire of the
street, and _did spread them abroad_." "The goldsmith _spreadeth it
over_ with gold." "Thus saith the Lord: he that created the heavens, and
stretched them out; he that _spread forth_ the earth." "I am the Lord,
that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone, and
_spreadeth abroad_ the earth by myself." "To him that _stretcheth out_
the earth above the waters." "The censers of these sinners against their
own souls, let them _make them broad_ plates, for a covering for the
altar. _And they were made broad._" "Hast thou with him _spread out_ the
sky;"[239] or, in Humboldt's elegant rendering, "the pure ether,
_spread_ (during the scorching heat of the south wind) as a melted
mirror over the parched desert."[240] We might refer to the opinions of
lexicographers, all unanimous in ascribing the same idea to the word;
but the authorities given above are conclusive. The meaning, then, of
the Hebrew word rendered firmament is so utterly removed from the notion
of compactness, or solidity, or metallic or crystalline spheres, that it
is derived from the very opposite; the fineness or tenuity produced by
processes of expansion. Science has not been able to this day to invent
a better word for the regions of space than the literal rendering of the
original Hebrew word used by Moses--_the expanse_.

The inspired writers of the New Testament, though they found the world
full of all the absurdities of the Greek philosophy, and their Greek
translations of the Bible continually using the word _stereoma_, which
expressed these notions, _never used it_ but once, and then not for the
sky, but for the _steadfastness of faith_ in Christ. Their thus using it
once shows that they were acquainted with the word, and its proper
meaning, and that their disuse of it was intentional; while their disuse
of it, and choice of another word to denote the heavens, proves
decisively that they disapprove