Heavens of earth’s atmosphere. “The heaven(s)” may apply to the full range of earth’s atmosphere in which dew and frost form (Ge 27:28; Job 38:29), the birds fly (De 4:17; Pr 30:19; Mt 6:26), the winds blow (Ps 78:26), lightning flashes (Lu 17:24), and the clouds float and drop their rain, snow, or hailstones (Jos 10:11; 1Ki 18:45; Isa 55:10; Ac 14:17). “The sky” is sometimes meant, that is, the apparent or visual dome or vault arching over the earth.​—Mt 16:1-3; Ac 1:10, 11.

This atmospheric region corresponds generally to the “expanse [Heb., ra·qiʹaʽ]” formed during the second creative period, described at Genesis 1:6-8. It is evidently to this ‘heaven’ that Genesis 2:4; Exodus 20:11; 31:17 refer in speaking of the creation of “the heavens and the earth.”​—See EXPANSE.

When the expanse of atmosphere was formed, earth’s surface waters were separated from other waters above the expanse. This explains the expression used with regard to the global Flood of Noah’s day, that “all the springs of the vast watery deep were broken open and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.” (Ge 7:11; compare Pr 8:27, 28.) At the Flood, the waters suspended above the expanse apparently descended as if by certain channels, as well as in rainfall. When this vast reservoir had emptied itself, such “floodgates of the heavens” were, in effect, “stopped up.”​—Ge 8:2.

“Midheaven” and ‘extremities of heavens.’ The expression “midheaven” applies to the region within earth’s expanse of atmosphere where birds, such as the eagle, fly. (Re 8:13; 14:6; 19:17; De 4:11 [Heb., “heart of the heavens”]) Somewhat similar is the expression “between the earth and the heavens.” (1Ch 21:16; 2Sa 18:9) The advance of Babylon’s attackers from “the extremity of the heavens” evidently means their coming to her from the distant horizon (where earth and sky appear to meet and the sun appears to rise and set). (Isa 13:5; compare Ps 19:4-6.) Similarly “from the four extremities of the heavens” apparently refers to four points of the compass, thus indicating a coverage of the four quarters of the earth. (Jer 49:36; compare Da 8:8; 11:4; Mt 24:31; Mr 13:27.)

The cloudy skies. Another term, the Hebrew shaʹchaq, is also used to refer to the “skies” or their clouds. (De 33:26; Pr 3:20; Isa 45:8) This word has the root meaning of something beaten fine or pulverized, as the “film of dust” (shaʹchaq) at Isaiah 40:15. There is a definite appropriateness in this meaning, inasmuch as clouds form when warm air, rising from the earth, becomes cooled to what is known as the dewpoint, and the water vapor in it condenses into minute particles sometimes called water dust. (Compare Job 36:27, 28; see CLOUD.) Adding to the appropriateness, the visual effect of the blue dome of the sky is caused by the diffusion of the rays of the sun by gas molecules and other particles (including dust) composing the atmosphere. By God’s formation of such atmosphere, he has, in effect, ‘beaten out the skies hard like a molten mirror,’ giving a definite limit, or clear demarcation, to the atmospheric blue vault above man.​—Job 37:18.