At first, I wasn't going to use firmament as a word of the day, mostly because nouns are a bit more difficult than adjectives in terms of my baseline for WotD posts. However, with it being a more recent addition after my husband mentioned it last night upon completing our reading time with our daughter, I decided to look up the definition list to see what I could derive.
Boy was I blown away. Now, those of you who are particularly religious, primarily in the Christianity department, please do not hate me. I don't read the Bible. So, naturally, I had no idea the significance of firmament in the Bible or its weight in Christian belief - that being that the firmament is what holds Heaven.
Firmament | fər-mə-mənt: noun: the vault or arch in the sky, heavens; the field or sphere of an interest or activity
I had always seen firmament used to describe the brilliance of a sunrise or a sunset or even the twinkling stillness of the night sky. As a reader, I saw firmament as the brilliance of the sky, not so much the arch that acts as a gateway to the heavens. Reading into the actual word, I realize it has more to do with the atmosphere, itself, and less of the brilliance of the giant orbs outside of it.
Studying more on the word's use in a Biblical sense, the firmament is the dome that was built on the second day in Genesis to form the sky as we saw it. It was believed at the time that the firmament, itself, contained the stars, and just beyond it was the Ocean of Heaven, containing the Pillars of Heaven. The firmament divided the waters of Earth from the waters of the skies. Honestly, I find the whole system to be quite fascinating, purely from a writer's perspective.
Firmament | ɝː.mə.mənt: noun: the sky
Going back to Merriam-Webster's definitions of firmament, I'm rather intrigued to see it used more often for the other meaning. Of course, there are other words to describe a sphere of interest, such as niche, which was the first word that came to mind for me. Had I not looked it up, I wouldn't have known of that other meaning at all.
Sadly, I have no examples of firmament with that other definition. The sentence that brought the word to my attention in the first place was the typical use of the word. Despite that, however, I feel it's a beautiful representation of such a fascinating and delightful word!
He gazed up at the night sky, where a sliver of moon, resembling a slice of russet apple, was surrounded by myriads of stars twinkling in the firmament.
The sentence as a whole gives me chills with how beautifully written it is. And after seeing firmament through an entirely new lens, I have an even deeper respect for it!
In what ways have you seen firmament used? Would you use the other definition provided by Merriam-Webster, or would you stick to the original use of the word? What other words would you like to see? Let me know all that and more, and until tomorrow, happy reading!
*Special thanks to the websites I pulled most of my knowledge of firmament in the Bible from: Biologos & Christianity.com!
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