Perhaps they want to make it clear that we are talking about the FIRMAMENT Again, we are only talking about ONE of the days so WHY would FIRMAMENT be used three times. On day four we see firmament used three times. And the evening and the morning were the second day. Gen 1:8 And God called the firmament H7549 Heaven. Gen 1:7 And God made the firmament, H7549 and divided the waters which were under the firmament H7549 from the waters which were above the firmament: H7549 and it was so. Gen 1:6 And God said, Let there be a firmament H7549 in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. We are told that the firmament divided the waters. Then we are told: 'God called the firmament Heaven. WOW five times? In a book so short with so few words to begin with. If you look at the second day we see that firmament is used five times. Next we see that God created BLANK the Heaven. The next step would be to get a concordance and study every time that BLANK word is used in the book of Genisis. The translators did not and perhaps could not do that for us. So now it is up to US to fill in the blank.

So the translation should be: In the beginning God created BLANK Heaven BLANK Earth. The translators did not assigned an English word the first time, the second time they used the word 'AND'. Usually this is a indication that word is very important.

WHY would you repeat a word if you are only using 7 words to begin with. Yet ONE of those 7 words ( teh) is repeated twice. In the Hebrew the very first verse in the Bible has 7 words. Genisis 1:1 In the beginning God created * the heaven and the earth.

Firmament of heaven