Theme: Divine Separation Creating Atmospheric Order Through God’s Spoken Word Establishing Habitable Space Between Waters Above and Waters Below
“So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so.”
— Genesis 1:7, New International Version (NIV)
“And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so.”
— Genesis 1:7, English Standard Version (ESV)
“Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so.”
— Genesis 1:7, New King James Version (NKJV)
“And that is what happened. God made this space to separate the waters of the earth from the waters of the heavens.”
— Genesis 1:7, New Living Translation (NLT)
“So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above the expanse. And it was so.”
— Genesis 1:7, Christian Standard Bible (CSB)
Last spring during a thunderstorm that knocked out power at CityLight Church, we huddled in the fellowship hall listening to rain pound the roof while lightning lit up the windows. One of our teenagers asked me something I wasn’t expecting: “Pastor Mike, where does all this water come from?”
“Like, why is there water up in the clouds and water down here?” That question opened up a conversation about the meaning of Genesis 1:7 that I hadn’t planned but desperately needed.
The meaning of Genesis 1:7 describes the second day of creation when God separated waters above from waters below by creating an expanse between them. Most of us never think about the atmosphere, but we’d die in minutes without it.
This verse captures the moment God created the very space we breathe in, establishing atmospheric conditions that make Earth habitable. Understanding Genesis 1:7 changes how you see the sky above your head.
Meaning of Genesis 1:7
Genesis 1:7 describes God’s creative work on the second day, when He made an expanse (or firmament) that separated water into two distinct locations: waters below the expanse and waters above it.
The verse concludes with “and it was so,” confirming that God’s word accomplished exactly what He intended.
The Hebrew word translated as “expanse,” “firmament,” or “vault” is raqia, which comes from a root meaning to spread out, beat out, or stamp.
Ancient metalworkers would hammer metal into thin sheets, and that imagery influenced how Hebrew speakers understood this word. The expanse is something spread out, stretched between the waters below and waters above.
Now here’s where modern readers get confused, and honestly, where I used to get confused too. We read “waters above” and wonder what that means.
Ancient Hebrews would have looked at rain, dew, and clouds and concluded there must be water up there somewhere. They weren’t wrong—water exists in Earth’s atmosphere as vapor, droplets, and ice crystals.
Genesis 1:7 isn’t teaching faulty science. It’s describing from human observational perspective the separation that created our atmosphere.
What matters theologically is the separation itself. Before this moment, according to Genesis 1:2, water covered everything in formless chaos.
God begins organizing creation by separating light from darkness (day one), then separating waters from waters (day two). Order emerges through divine separation.
I counseled a young couple at CityLight Church going through marital struggles, and we talked about healthy boundaries. Sometimes love requires separation—not necessarily divorce, but appropriate distance that creates space for growth and healing.
The meaning of Genesis 1:7 demonstrates that separation isn’t always negative. God separated waters to create something essential: the space where life could exist.
The phrase “and it was so” appears throughout Genesis 1, but notice something interesting about day two. This is the only day where God doesn’t say “it was good” after creating.
Scholars debate why, but one compelling explanation is that the work begun on day two (separating waters) isn’t completed until day three when God gathers the waters below into seas and brings forth dry land. The goodness comes with completion.
Explaining the Context of Genesis 1:7
Genesis 1:7 occurs on creation’s second day, following the creation of light and separation of light from darkness on day one. To understand its full significance, we need to see how it fits into creation week’s progression and the theological message Moses communicated to ancient Israel.
The immediate context starts in verse 6, where God declares His intention: “Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water.”
Verse 7 describes how God accomplished this intention—He made the expanse and performed the separation. Verse 8 names this expanse “sky” or “heaven” and concludes the second day.
This pattern of divine declaration followed by divine action followed by divine naming runs throughout Genesis 1. God doesn’t just wish things into existence.
He speaks with creative authority, then the text confirms His word produced exactly the intended result.
The historical context matters enormously. Moses wrote Genesis during or after the Exodus, when Israel had lived for generations under Egyptian worldview.
Ancient Near Eastern cultures, including Egypt and later Canaan, believed the sky was a solid dome (sometimes depicted as a goddess) holding back primordial waters that constantly threatened to flood the world.
Their creation myths portrayed gods battling chaos monsters to maintain cosmic order.
Understanding the meaning of Genesis 1:7 subverts all of that. There’s no battle. No struggling against chaos.
No multiple gods negotiating cosmic arrangements. One God speaks, separation happens, order emerges.
The expanse isn’t a divine being or goddess requiring worship—it’s a created thing made to serve God’s purposes.
At CityLight Church, we’ve got several members from cultural backgrounds where nature worship remains influential—animistic beliefs that spirits inhabit natural features.
Understanding Genesis 1:7 helps them see that the sky isn’t inhabited by spirits needing appeasement. It’s God’s creation functioning according to His design.
The broader literary structure shows days one through three establishing domains (light, sky and water, land and vegetation) while days four through six fill those domains with rulers (sun and moon, birds and fish, animals and humans).
Day two creates the atmospheric domain that birds will inhabit on day five.
This structural parallel isn’t accidental. It demonstrates intentional design in creation’s order.
God doesn’t randomly throw elements together. He systematically establishes environments, then populates them with appropriate inhabitants.
Explaining the Key Parts of Genesis 1:7
“So God made the vault”
The action begins with God making or fashioning the expanse. The Hebrew asah means to make, fashion, or produce.
This is active creative work, not passive observation. God didn’t discover an existing expanse—He made it.
The various translations (vault, expanse, firmament) all attempt to convey this Hebrew concept of something spread out creating separation. Modern readers might think “atmosphere” or “sky,” which captures the functional meaning even if ancient cosmology pictured it differently.
“and separated the water under the vault from the water above it”
Here’s the crucial action: separation. The Hebrew badal means to divide, separate, distinguish.
It’s the same word used when God separated light from darkness in verse 4. God establishes order by creating distinctions, by putting things in their proper categories and locations.
The waters below include oceans, lakes, rivers, and groundwater. The waters above include atmospheric moisture—water vapor, clouds, precipitation.
God established the atmospheric space between them where weather systems operate and where terrestrial life breathes.
“And it was so”
This confirmation phrase demonstrates that divine word accomplishes divine intention without failure or resistance.
When God speaks creatively, reality conforms to His word immediately and completely. There’s no gap between God’s declaration and its fulfillment, no possibility that His creative word might fail.
This phrase should give believers tremendous confidence in all of Scripture’s promises. The same God whose word separated waters can accomplish whatever He declares.
Lessons to Learn from Genesis 1:7
1. God Creates Habitable Space Through Intentional Separation
The atmosphere created in Genesis 1:7 is what makes Earth livable. It regulates temperature, protects from radiation, distributes water through weather systems, and provides air to breathe.
God didn’t randomly separate waters—He created precisely the conditions necessary for life.
This reveals divine intention and care in creation’s design, showing that you’re not here by accident in a random universe but by divine purpose in a designed creation.
2. Separation Can Be Creative Rather Than Destructive
We often view separation negatively—broken relationships, divided communities, isolated individuals. But Genesis 1:7 shows separation establishing something essential.
Sometimes God separates things in our lives not to punish but to create space for growth.
At CityLight Church, I’ve watched people experience painful separations from toxic relationships or unhealthy patterns, and in that space of separation, they discovered freedom to become who God intended.
3. God’s Word Accomplishes What He Intends Without Failure
The phrase “and it was so” demonstrates perfect correlation between divine declaration and divine accomplishment. When God said “Let there be an expanse,” there was an expanse, functioning exactly as intended.
This principle extends throughout Scripture. God’s promises don’t fail.
His warnings aren’t empty. His word does what it says.
Trust the reliability of Scripture based on the character of the God who spoke it.
4. Observable Creation Reflects Divine Design
Genesis 1:7 describes physical reality—an atmosphere separating surface water from atmospheric water. Ancient peoples observed rain falling from the sky and concluded water existed above.
Modern science confirms water exists in Earth’s atmosphere as vapor, droplets, and ice.
The theological point isn’t about ancient cosmology but about divine ordering of physical creation. God made the natural world operate according to reliable patterns that humans can observe and understand.
5. God Works Systematically to Establish Order
Creation week progresses methodically: light, atmosphere, land, celestial bodies, animals, humans. God doesn’t create chaotically.
He establishes foundations before building on them, creates environments before placing inhabitants in them.
This systematic approach reveals divine wisdom and invites us to approach our own work, relationships, and spiritual growth with similar intentionality rather than haphazard reactions.
Related Bible Verses
Psalm 148:4, NKJV
“Praise Him, you heavens of heavens, And you waters above the heavens!”
The psalmist calls even the waters above the heavens to praise God, directly referencing the separation described in Genesis 1:7 and acknowledging these waters remain under God’s authority.
Proverbs 8:27-28, ESV
“When he established the heavens, I was there; when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep.”
Wisdom personified describes being present at creation when God made firm the skies, referring to the expanse created in Genesis 1:7 that holds atmospheric waters.
Job 37:18, NIV
“can you join him in spreading out the skies, hard as a mirror of cast bronze?”
God challenges Job by referencing the spreading out of skies, using language that echoes Genesis 1:7 and demonstrates that only divine power could accomplish this creative work.
2 Peter 3:5, CSB
“They deliberately overlook this: By the word of God the heavens came into being long ago and the earth was brought about out of water and through water.”
Peter references creation involving waters and heavens, connecting to Genesis 1:7 while arguing that the same God who created through water will judge through fire.
Psalm 104:2-3, NLT
“You are dressed in a robe of light. You stretch out the starry curtain of the heavens; you lay out the rafters of your home in the rain clouds.”
The psalmist poetically describes God stretching out the heavens and dwelling above the waters, imagery directly connected to the separation described in Genesis 1:7.
How Genesis 1:7 Points to Christ
Genesis 1:7 reveals God’s authority over creation’s most fundamental elements, establishing order through His spoken word. This creative authority finds ultimate expression in Jesus Christ, the eternal Word through whom all things were made.
John 1:3 declares, “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”
When God spoke in Genesis 1:7 to create the expanse and separate waters, He spoke through the Word who is Christ. Jesus is the agent of creation, the one through whom God’s creative word accomplishes its purpose.
Colossians 1:16 expands this truth: “For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible…all things have been created through him and for him.”
The atmospheric expanse created in Genesis 1:7 exists because of Christ and for Christ. Every breath you take happens in space Christ created.
At CityLight Church, we recently studied how Jesus demonstrated authority over the very elements He created. When He calmed the storm in Mark 4:39, speaking to wind and waves that immediately obeyed, He was exercising the same authority that separated waters and established atmospheric order in Genesis 1:7.
The connection goes deeper. Hebrews 1:3 states that Christ is “sustaining all things by his powerful word.”
The separation established in Genesis 1:7 doesn’t just exist because Christ created it—it continues existing because He actively sustains it. The atmosphere you’re breathing right now remains functional because Christ maintains creation’s order through His ongoing word.
Consider also how Jesus brought spiritual separation between light and darkness, between His followers and the world, between righteousness and sin.
Just as Genesis 1:7 shows God creating necessary separation for physical life, Jesus creates necessary separation for spiritual life.
The imagery of waters separated by divine word also prefigures baptism, where believers pass through water as an act of separation from old life into new life in Christ. The physical separation in Genesis 1:7 points toward the spiritual separation Christ accomplishes through His death and resurrection.
Closing Reflection
Genesis 1:7 captures a moment we completely take for granted—the creation of the atmosphere that makes life possible. Every breath you take happens in the space God created when He separated waters above from waters below.
The sky you see when you look up isn’t random cosmic accident but intentional divine design.
This verse reminds us that God works through separation to create order. He separated light from darkness, waters from waters, land from seas.
Some of the separations you’ve experienced—painful as they were—might have been God creating space for something new to emerge.
The phrase “and it was so” should encourage every believer. When God speaks, reality conforms to His word.
His promises won’t fail. His purposes won’t be thwarted.
The same authority that separated waters and created atmosphere can speak into your circumstances with power to transform them.
At CityLight Church, we constantly return to these creation texts because they establish foundational truths about who God is and who we are. You’re not here by chance.
You’re not breathing accidental air in a random universe. You’re living in carefully ordered creation made by a God who speaks worlds into existence and sustains them by His word.
Next time you feel rain on your face or see clouds drifting across the sky, remember Genesis 1:7. Those waters above that God separated from waters below continue functioning according to His design, providing precipitation that waters crops, fills rivers, and sustains life.
Every weather system is a testament to the separation God established on creation’s second day.
And remember that the One who created this atmospheric space, the Word through whom all things were made, walked among us as Jesus Christ, demonstrated His authority over the elements He created, and offers to speak that same creative word into your life.
Say This Prayer
Creator God,
Thank You for the air I breathe, existing in the space You created when You separated waters on creation’s second day. Every breath reminds me that You designed this world with intention, creating precisely the conditions necessary for life to flourish.
Help me trust that the same authority that spoke the atmosphere into existence can speak order into my life’s chaos. When circumstances feel overwhelming and formless, remind me that You specialize in creating order through Your word.
Thank You for separations that felt painful but created space for growth. Help me trust Your wisdom when You separate me from relationships, patterns, or situations that prevent me from becoming who You intended.
Forgive me when I worship creation instead of You, when I take for granted the countless ways You’ve designed this world to sustain my life, when I forget that everything I observe operates according to Your will.
Thank You for sending Jesus, the Word through whom the expanse was made, who walked among us demonstrating authority over wind and waves, who continues sustaining all things by His powerful word.
May I live today recognizing that every breath I take happens in space You created, under skies You spread out, surrounded by Your ongoing creative work.
Through Christ who sustains all things, Amen.
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