Genesis 1:31 comments: six days to create

31 ¶  And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

The initial act of creation took six physical, literal days. The Bible doesn’t specifically say when this happened. This is disturbing because it could have. For example, the beginning of the building of Solomon’s temple is pinned to the Exodus from Egypt as shown in;

1Kings 6:1  And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the LORD.

But, God did not see fit to set the creation down in a specific statement of a date although many, including myself, believe that it probably did not take place much earlier than 6,000 years ago as a general reading of who was father to whom can show. This goes against all modern dating techniques and the theories of both atheistic evolutionists and intelligent design advocates. They all believe in long ages of millions and billions of years although some of the latter believe in a God or gods while some of the former believe in panspermia from a stellar cloud or perhaps the seeding of earth by an alien super-civilization.

In any event, modern dating methods are either pinned to events in history whose date we think we know when calendars in the past have been as much a cultural and religious construct as they have ever been an accurate method of dating. So, some dating methods are pinned to historical events which are pinned to other historical events and processes whose dating accuracy is, at best, uncertain. Other dating methods are pinned to things that are subject to transport contamination where the materials being measured may have been altered by some other material. Other dating methods are pinned to events that are affected by climate conditions. Most of them are dependent upon things happening in the distant past, which is not observable, as they are in the present, of which the Bible denies this is the case. The conditions of creation were vastly different than they are now.

As an example, dinosaur bones have typically been dated by the strata of earth they are found in and the bones not carbon-dated themselves. Recently, not only have red blood cells been found in supposed 60 million years old bones, which is an improbability at best, but actual carbon-dating of dinosaur bones have declared them to be no more than a few tens of thousands of years old rather than tens of millions.

My point is, to the young Christian who is uncertain, that there is not enough evidence as the fossil record is incomplete and inconsistent and the methods and procedures of dating are uncertain and questionable that we should not spend any time doubting God’s word, the musings of theoretical scientists aside. Long ages of earth fit rather easily into pagan Hindu mythology just as the Big Bang Theory’s Singularity is a linear descendant of the Kabbala’s mustard seed or the Hindu Golden Egg and modern atheistic evolution is merely a continuance of ancient Greek philosophers guessing about man moving from puddle to paradise rather than from God’s creation to Satan’s helpless stooge.

The conclusion is that God’s creation took six days to complete and it was good. Enough said, so it is settled for anyone who has faith in God’s written word.

Genesis 1:29-30 comments: a diet of plant-life

29 ¶  And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. 30  And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

This is one example of how vastly different things were on the early earth. Notice what God said to Noah after the Flood.

Genesis 9:1 ¶  And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. 2  And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered. 3  Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things. 4  But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.

There are various possibilities. Perhaps God did not create predators until after the Flood or perhaps all creatures, even meat-eaters today, were capable of surviving on vegetable matter, then.  Even today everyone has known of a house-cat who liked green things so it is not that a predator cannot eat such things but that, as cats are obligate carnivores today and must have meat, so the original cat-creatures had to not have that need for health and survival. The point is that the entire ecosystem, lush and tropical as it may have been, did not require killing for survival.

With regard to the conditions under which we live a famous atheist scientist noted.

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive; others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites; thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored….In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. (14)

But, is death necessary at all in biology? Another evolutionary scientist acknowledged that it is not.

Humans on rare occasions may survive to 120 years, some turtles to 200. But all animals eventually die. Many single-cell organisms may die, as the result of accident or starvation; in fact the vast majority do. But there is nothing programmed into them that says they must die. Death did not appear simultaneously with life. This is one of the most important and profound statements in all of biology. At the very least it deserves repetition: Death is not inextricably intertwined with the definition of life. (15)

Nevertheless, here we have a clear statement that both man and beast’s diet consisted of non-animal matter in the early earth.

“Dentition suggests an omnivorous diet, in which nuts and fruits, grubs, and perhaps some kind of vegetable shoots were more important than animal flesh.” (16)

Note Paul’s statement;

Romans 5:12  Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

The question we have to ask ourselves is this. Is this, in Romans, the world of men or the world as in the earth? There are two distinct usages of world in the Bible, based on context. One might be considered the people that dwell upon the earth and one the earth itself.

Revelation 3:10  Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.

Job 37:12  And it is turned round about by his counsels: that they may do whatsoever he commandeth them upon the face of the world in the earth.

[A third possible meaning can be the world system of things; philosophy, entertainment, and politics and trends.

1John 2:15  Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16  For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. 17  And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.]

In any event, the early earth was a vastly different place, at least until the time of Adam and Eve’s downfall, than it was after that or is now. Of course, the question also hinges around what we, in this modern age, regard as life or living. The Biblical definition will be important for our consideration in a few chapters. As there is some philosophical question today over whether or not something that replicates itself is alive, such as a computer program, or, by strict definition, whether a virus, which does not have its own machinery for reproducing but takes over the host’s equipment for that, is a living thing, the question of what constitutes life is important for our understanding here.

(14) Richard Dawkins, River out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 154-155.

(15) William R. Clark, Sex and the Origins of Death (London: Oxford University Press, 1998), 54.

(16) William H. McNeil, Plagues and Peoples (New York: Anchor Books, 1976), 36.

Genesis 1:26-28 comments: in our image

26 ¶  And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28  And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

In verse 26 it is said that man is made to look like God in His three parts of body, soul, and spirit. Man could have been made to fly or walk on all fours like a beast as God does have a prototype of a beast with a man’s face as you can see by looking at the verses I mentioned earlier in Ezekiel and Revelation with regard to the cherubim. So, the definition here and elsewhere of the three parts of God making men in His image will become an important point in the walk on earth of Jesus Christ, who is the body, the image, and the likeness of God.

Hebrews 1:3  Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;

Colossians 1:15  Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature:

As God consists of three parts that can operate independently but with the same will; hence the use of our here, so man is composed of three parts.

Man;

1Thessalonians 5:23  And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

God;

Matthew 28:19  Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:

2Corinthians 13:14  The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen.

1John 5:7  For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.

Mankind had dominion, stewardship, or management over all life on earth as given by authority of God. The first man was genetically perfect, no doubt. This is God’s initial bestowing of a title, an authority under Him, a kingship, if you will, over His living creation to mankind. As Genesis 37:8 and other verses show us, having dominion means to reign over.

The words man and him include male and female, or them, the specifics of which creation will be revealed in a few verses.

Here in 28 we have an issue with the word replenish which plays a certain role in the belief in a gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. This English word is used seven times in some form in the Bible. The word it comes from in Hebrew is used 108 times for fill as in verse 22. Replenish meant in 1611 in English to fill again and to fill and to provide that which is lacking. Taking the strictly modern meaning of replenish as to fill again is typical of 19^th century interpretation where the Bible was taken literally, not in the context in which it was written, but in the context from which it is interpreted at the time, which leads to sore errors. You don’t need the Hebrew to see by comparing verses and God’s command that replenish in verse 28 is linked to fill in verse 22 as a synonym.

Genesis 1:20-25 comments: life on land and water

    20 ¶  And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 21  And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 22  And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. 23  And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

    24 ¶  And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. 25  And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

In this passage we can see the origination of living things from the sea and the earth. God calls for abundance. From the evidence available some scientists have estimated the biomass or total life on earth, at various points in their assumed epochs or time periods, to be 500 times the biomass of earth we find today on an earth that was uniformly tropical in climate. Based on the fossil evidence available to us, which does not show a uniform progression of life from simple to complex as theoretical scientists would have you believe, remains of tropical plants can be found all over the earth. Fossil fuels such as oil, coal, and natural gas are thought to be by the majority of scientists the result of an immense decaying biomass formed under intense pressure over time.

Contradicting evolutionary theory God brought great creatures of a large size into being in one day along with birds and other fowls, or any winged creature.

A whale is a large sea creature and can be what we today would call a mammal or it can be one of the many types of fish we observe. The classification of mammal and reptile came after the Bible was written and is purely man’s way of categorizing animals as the word mammal once had to do with the breast and a reptile was any creeping or crawling thing, not just a snake, but included an earthworm.

Cattle includes sheep and beeves or bovine creatures useful to man.

Genesis 30:32  I will pass through all thy flock to day, removing from thence all the speckled and spotted cattle, and all the brown cattle among the sheep, and the spotted and speckled among the goats: and of such shall be my hire.

Numbers 31:28  And levy a tribute unto the LORD of the men of war which went out to battle: one soul of five hundred, both of the persons, and of the beeves, and of the asses, and of the sheep:

God divides creatures into categories based on their usefulness to mankind although they are God’s property and He knows them all and regards their lives very closely.

Psalm 50:10  For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. 11  I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine.

Matthew 10:29  Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.

And their uses by man are limited by God’s standards of mercy and kindness.

Proverbs 12:10  A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.

Luke 14:5  And answered them, saying, Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the sabbath day?

2Samuel 12:3  But the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished up: and it grew up together with him, and with his children; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter.

And as we have seen in history and know, in fact, if we are honest wild animals rarely are useful as domesticated companions of mankind. A unicorn is a one-horned animal, probably the rhinoceros, which once had a range from China to Spain as evidenced by the Lascaux cave paintings in France.

Job 39:9  Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? 10  Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee? 11  Wilt thou trust him, because his strength is great? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him? 12  Wilt thou believe him, that he will bring home thy seed, and gather it into thy barn?

They reproduce after their kind meaning no cat ever became a dog and, contrary to the musings of theoretical scientists, no giant lizard ever became a bird. Fossil evidence suggests there were a few prototypes of all of the species we have today. Diversity within a kind is immense but there is no evidence that a dog-like creature became a possum, so get over it.

Some final thoughts on evolution, as understood, for this section. Standard evolutionary thought is that mutations cause changes in an organism which are then selected for survivability which is called natural selection. This is supposed to be how the original one-celled creature became the diverse life on earth in spite of the relative genetic complexity of even the simplest organism. However, this survival of the fittest breaks down on a number of intellectual levels. One, a pod of shrimp, save for a few, being eaten by a whale would more likely be called the survival of the luckiest, wouldn’t you say? Two, creatures do live long enough to pass along harmful mutations, of which most mutations are harmful or even deadly, so this survival of the fittest also includes survival of the unfittest, too. Third, even scientists who believe in evolution understand that basic structures like the limb, wing, leg and foot, arm and hand of many creatures don’t reflect any necessary survival trait that came into being but a common form that looks more like the design of an engineer than an accident caused by brute forces of nature working with accidental mutations. There are so many problems and questions raised by atheistic evolution that are simply solved by believing what God has said here through Moses.

One thing is sure. God loves diversity in nature and has created an abundant and varied bundle of life. (1Samuel 25:29)

It would appear to me that the living creatures that surround the throne of God in Revelation 4:6-7 and Ezekiel, chapters 1 and 10 may be representative of the prototypes in the spiritual world for living creatures on earth and, hence, what we are told about represent only a small part of what we will see. It is important to note that Satan is one of these cherubim, these spiritual creatures, as per Ezekiel 28, and we do get a glimpse of animals, notably horses, in the spiritual world in 2Kings 6 and other places.

Genesis 1:14-19 comments: the fourth day

14 ¶  And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: 15  And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. 16  And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. 17  And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 18  And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. 19  And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

The Bible teaches an earth-centered and an earth-focused universe. Theoretical scientists dismiss this notion as, in order to push an atheist agenda this cannot be accepted. However, some of the most brilliant scientists have admitted that the earth appears, from their own observations, to be in a central location in the universe although they simply cannot intellectually accept that.

Fred Hoyle, one of history’s great theoretical scientists, wrote in a textbook published in 1975;

However, [refers to a diagram of the universe] would demand a special relation of our own galaxy to the universe, since in this figure we have taken our galaxy to be located in the center of a nonuniform distribution of galaxies. It hardly seems plausible that our galaxy would be in any such privileged position. So we answer the above question [would anywhere appear to be the center making the universe acentric?] affirmatively on intellectual grounds rather than because such an answer is determined by observation.(10)

The fact that, according to the observations of many theoretical scientists, based on the data they have collected based on their own theories and mathematical models, the earth may be in a central position in the universe is interesting, to say the least. Regarding the belief that was once widely held by both scientists and Christians, that the earth was the center of the solar system (geocentric theory) rather than the sun (heliocentric theory), as Copernicus theorized, Hoyle had this interesting statement to make. “We now know that the difference between a heliocentric theory and a geocentric theory is one of relative motion only, and that such a difference has no physical significance.” (11) Remember there are no walls, ceiling, or floors in space so determining relative motion without those reference points can be very complicated and often the evidence and mathematical calculations can point to one way and also prove the reverse.

In the controversial book Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe by University of Washington scientists, Peter Ward, a geologist and paleontologist, and Donald Brownlee, astronomer and astrobiologist, put forth the evidence and theory that showed that for life to exist on earth the universe was perfectly suited and even a slight variation in much of the observable universe would result in a lifeless earth.

From our perspective here the earth appears to be the center of the universe and the only place where the existence of life is necessary. The Bible here states clearly that the sun and the moon were created for the earth, for purposes here, and were not formed by a random process without meaning.

However, modern ideology, that life is basically an accident and we are insignificant, swirling in an equally insignificant position in the universe, is the prevailing modern myth that you are allowing your children to be indoctrinated by in public school and in college.

By the way, with regard to the moon in verse 16 the Bible tells us that it does not generate light of its own…

Job 25:5  Behold even to the moon, and it shineth not; yea, the stars are not pure in his sight.

…just as we are told that the earth is not attached to any object…

Job 26:7  He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.

…and that it is circular in shape…

Isaiah 40:22  It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:

…and that in the expanse of outer space there is a vast empty place as Job 26:7 stated above, which we have confirmed by observation. (12)

And yet, theoretical scientists, in the main, deny the Bible’s truth. However, any honest reading of philosophers of science will show you that theoretical science is driven by ideology as much as it is any honest assessment of the evidence.(13)

Your best bet is to believe the Bible as literally written. It is a primary source, given to men by the God who created them, and is thoroughly reliable while the musings of theoretical scientists are not. The sun and the moon exist to perform certain functions with regard to the earth, not as accidental events of nature in space-time.

(10) Fred Hoyle, Astronomy and Cosmology: A Modern Course (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman & Co., 1975), 87.

(11) Ibid., 416.

(12) Sarah Knapton, “Mysterious Supervoid in Space is Largest Object Ever Discovered, Scientists Claim,” The Telegraph, April 20, 2015. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/11550868/Giant-mysterious-empty-hole-found-in-universe.html.

(13) Suggested reading includes Richard Lewontin's Biology as Ideology,  Paul Feyerabend’s The Tyranny of Science and Against Method, Ian Hacking’s Representing and Intervening, Nancy Cartwright’s How the Laws of Physics Lie, Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and The Copernican Revolution, and E.A. Burtt’s The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, all of which I have read and have in my library.

Genesis 1:9-13 comments: plant life first

9 ¶  And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. 10  And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

In the third 24-hour period, the water covered earth, under God’s authority and power, water and land separated. Land appears above water which may clarify the condition of the earth as being without form, and void as the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters in verse two. Theoretical scientists suppose a primeval earth with one super-continent and the rest covered by water. This continent is called Gondwanaland, with another super-continent theorized for later call Pangaea. Whatever the musings of scientists who ponder origins and original things God has clearly here, through Moses, given us the separation of the earth, the dividing of it, between land and sea.

Psalm 95:5  The sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land.

It will be important for later to understand that theoretical scientists presume as much or more water under the earth’s crust as above it, in the oceans.(7)

(7)Mark Prigg, “Revealed:The vast reservoir hidden beneath the Earth's crust that holds as much water as ALL of the oceans,” DailyMail.com, March 12, 2014.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2579584/The-vast-reservoir-hidden-Earths-crust-holds-water-ALL-oceans.html#ixzz47Uti24Se 

 11  And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. 12  And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 13  And the evening and the morning were the third day.

In the same 24-hour period as the sea and land being divided you can see plant life being created from the earth, not out of nothing. Life is created out of substances already formed the previous day. A fundamental point of biology is made here in that plants yield fruit after their kind. It seems obvious that an orange tree doesn’t produce pears but this will be an important point to remember in a few verses. Kind is a Biblical taxonomic classification. Just as we use Species, Genus, Family, or Order God uses the more general word, Kind. Kind is much larger than species and should not be confused with that word as there are more than two dozen definitions of species, none of which denote the Kind of Genesis but rather smaller divisions of plant and animal life.(8) God, speaking through Moses’ writing, is speaking here about original creations from which developed all other types.

There was a pre-Darwin doctrine claimed by both scientists and Anglican churchmen called ‘The Immutability of Species,’ which insisted that all species were specially created by God at the beginning. This clearly confused kinds with species.

Grasses include wheat, rice, corn, and other grains such as millet and rye. Fruits would include apples, citrus fruits, melons, etc.(9)

 (8) John S. Wilkins, “A List of 26 Species ‘Concepts,’” Evolving Thoughts Science Blog. October 1, 2006. http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2006/10/01/a-list-of-26-species-concepts/

(9)”Cereals, grasses, and grains,” United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service, http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/ethnobotany/food/grains.shtml, (accessed 5.3.2016).

Genesis 1:6-8 comments: the firmament

6 ¶  And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 7  And 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. 8  And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

The firmament, heaven, or what we call our atmosphere and outer space, the heavens, is a band dividing waters on earth from waters which must now exist in the furthest reaches of space. I noted this previously although there is much more to be discovered and one could predict that at the outermost distance in space there should be quite a significant amount of water.

Psalm 148:4  Praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens.

God made the firmament and clearly expanded it creating the immense realm of space we see around us. Modern theoretical scientists talk about this rapid expansion of space but their starting point is not God’s creation but a god-like inanimate object, the Singularity, previously mentioned before what they call The Big Bang.

If the universe is 93 billion light-years (the distance light travels in one year) across as some theoretical scientists suggest and we have no way nor, in this life, ever will have a way to measure if this is true, then this happened very rapidly, by God’s hand, in a day. So, the evidence these scientists observe to come up with their atheistic theories, postulates, and conclusions are merely the evidence of the handiwork of the God of the Bible.

First there is the appearance of light, as theoretical scientists call the Photon Epoch, then a rapid expansion of the universe. I am not certifying that what scientists say is true when they make educated guesses nor do I mean to tie the Bible into current scientific understanding, which is changing, but merely to show that even theoretical science has dipped its toe into the pool of truth, perhaps to take it out again or perhaps to immerse itself further in understanding God’s actions in creation if they can just get past atheistic determinism caused by their inner fear of God’s judgment.

Again, I must repeat;

Psalm 19:1  « To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. » The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

And add;

Psalm 8:3 ¶  When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;

Psalm 33:6  By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.

Notice at the end of this day God does not say that it was good. There are things that will abide in space above us in a short while (for us reading) that we must be aware of.

Job 15:15  Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight.

Job 25:5  Behold even to the moon, and it shineth not; yea, the stars are not pure in his sight.

Ephesians 6:12  For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Ephesians 2:2  Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:

That the heavens have depth and distance is clear. Imagine a curtain being stretched out in a wind, with depth and distance.

Psalm 104:2  Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain: