What does “Heaven” mean in Gen 1:8?

Q: Does the name “Heaven” in Day 2 of the creation story in Genesis 1 mean the place where God and the angels live (i.e. “Heaven”) or the place where the sun, moon, and stars are (i.e. “heaven”)?  Asking for a 2nd grader.

Thanks so much for passing on this question!  This question is difficult because the term heaven in the OT (Heb. שָׁמַיִם) can mean different things.  Sometimes it refers to the physical space above the earth; this would be similar to the words “sky” and “space” in modern English.  Sometimes it refers to the divine realm, where God and the angels live, like what we mean when we say “heaven” in modern English today.  Scholars disagree about which meaning is intended in various places within Genesis 1.  Not only this, but in Psalm 148 you can see how the distinctions between the sense of heaven as “the sky” versus “the divine realm” are blurry.  The truth is that words are rather imprecise tools for indicating what we are talking about when we refer to things, but we usually find a way to get by. And we can do the same in regard to heaven in the OT. We can read and understand that heaven refers to “up there” as opposed to “down here.”  And that’s the whole point, I think.

So here’s my take. In Day Two, God gives the name “Heaven” to the “thing” (Heb. רָקִיעַ, perhaps meaning vault or dome or firmament, but some kind of barrier) that separates the earthly ocean from the heavenly ocean.  When I say “heavenly ocean,” I mean the ocean of the divine realm where God lives (see Psa 104:3ff).  When you read the creation narrative in Genesis 1, you can see how the name “Heaven” plays on both meanings of the term heaven described above.  When the “barrier” separates the water into two oceans, this action creates the “divine realm” (as a realm separate from the earth) as well as both “space” and “sky” (as physical spaces above the surface of the earth).

But what is important about Day Two (I think) is that the human realm and the divine realm are separated. God lives “up there,” and we live “down here.”  Of course, this sets the table for the entire story of the Bible. We can’t get “up there” to God. If we are to have any relationship with our Creator at all, God has to come “down here” to us.