Genesis 1:6. And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”
7. So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so.
8. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
9. And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so.
10. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.
14. And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years,
15. and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.” And it was so.
16. God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night--and the stars.
17. God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth,
18. to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.
11. In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.
12. The rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights. (NRSV)
In the Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, we find an excellent article (Vol. III, pp. 568-569 [two lengthy columns of fine print per page] on the word רָקִיעַ. Of special importance is the following from the article,
The verb רָקַע, raká, means to expand by beating, whether by the hand, the foot, or any instrument. It is especially used, however, of beating out metals into thin plates (Exod. xxxix, 3, Numb. xvi, 39), and hence the substantive רַקֻּעַים “broad plates” of metal (Numb. 16:38). (The italics are theirs).
Furthermore, the Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament by Brown, Driver, and Briggs published by Oxford University gives us the following meaning of word רָקִיעַ in Gen. 1:7, “the vault of heaven, or ‘firmament,’ regarded by Hebrews as solid, and supporting ‘waters’ above it.” (p. 956). Moreover, John Skinner, the late Principal and Professor of Old Testament Language and Literature at Westminster College, Cambridge, in his commentary on the Hebrew text of Genesis, writes,
6-8 Second Work: The Firmament.—The second fiat calls into existence a firmament, whose function is to divide the primeval waters into an upper and lower ocean, leaving a space between as the theater of further creative developments. The “firmament” is the dome of heaven, which to the ancients was no optical illusion, but a material structure, sometimes compared to an “upper chamber” (Ps. 104:12, Am 9:6) supported by “pillars” (Jb 26:11), and resembling in its surface a “molten mirror” (Jb 37:18). Above this are the heavenly waters, from which the rain descends through “windows” or “doors” (Gn 7:11, 8:2, 2 Ki 7:2, 19) opened and shut by God at His pleasure (Ps 78:23).
For further and much more extensive proof that this word רָקִיעַ is correctly translated as “dome” rather than “expanse”, please see the article for which I provided a link to in a post above. Here is the link again,
https://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/te...s/text/articles-books/seely-firmament-wtj.htm
The KJV, and many other translations use the word firmament which comes from the Latin word firmamentum.Firmamentum is the Latin word for ‘support’! And indeed, that support, the dome, would have to be immensely strong to hold up the weight of the water above it—enough water to cover even Mount Everest! (Just one gallon of water weighs approximately 8.35 lb (about 3.785 kg).