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The whole verse may be supposed to have the grammatical structure of either one or the other (both not both) of (A) or (B):
(A) I was so dedicated to remodeling my bathroom that I purchased not only a new bathtub, I bought a complete shower system for the tub!
(B) 'Praise Him, you celestial context of planet Earth's own precious atmosphere, and (you) waters that are above-in the atmosphere!
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(B) can be rendered in a single generic terminology:
(B 2) 'Praise Him, you context of the Earth's own Context, and (you) waters that are above-in that Context.'
If we grant that Psalm 148:1-13 is about natural things that basic humans can visually directly observe to be important to their lives, then (B) makes a lot of sense. If we grant that Earth is the sole primary implied subject for life, then why would God, much less the psalmist, completely ignore that? Was this verse, only, of all verses in this psalm, written by some ancient Hebrew version of Carl Sagan in Sagan's Cosmos TV show?
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The (B) rendering matches exactly the structure of Genesis 1:1. Both verses would then begin with a term that has no relevance apart from the existence of the following terms, and the middle term playing the key role for both the first and final term. For the Hebrew of 1:1, God is the middle of seven terms: three terms each to either side of Him. And in 1:1, God is best reflected in the final term, 'Earth', since Earth is the proper home of those made in His image.
If we assume that the structure of (A) is that of v. 4, then we allow that no wider context is required of v. 4 is required to understand v. But Psalm 148:4 already has a wider context, namely the whole psalm. And, within that context, an unobservable extragalactic distribution of water and ice is out of place. Granted, such a bizarre and unobservable object as that theorized by Humphreys is not as out of place in this psalm as would be, say, clear mention of duck soup, sandals, or raccoon roadkill. And, even more out of place would be mention of feces, electronic simulated computing, or artificially sweetened blueberry pie.
But, unless a lone exception is made in Psalm 148 for an unobservably distant extragalactic water and ice, then every bit of Psalm 148:1-13 clearly is about terrestrially observable, and terrestrially normal, subjects.
A knowledge of the atmosphere's cosmic preciousness is an essential part of a basic understanding of God's own life-focused Cosmos. An unobservably distant extragalactic water and ice is not.
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Faulkner (2016) seems to consider that the 'expanse' (rāqîaʿ, and 'shamayim') of v. 8 to be either interstellar space or the spatial dimension itself that we call 'the sky'. At the same time, Faulkner finds that 'expanse' ('firmament' in some translations) in v. 20 is the 'sky' in that same most general sense of “up there in the spatial dimension above our heads”. Faulkner reasons this way partly by relegating---at the outset---the 'modern' 'concept' of the atmosphere to non-existent status in the minds of the Bible writers.
Presumably, Faulkner takes for granted that, without careful experiments using appropriate artificial instrumentation, humans can only get the impression that the air they breath, and the blueness of the daylight sky, extends to the Moon, Sun, and Stars. And Faulkner is sure that the Bible writers did not know this about the air, and therefore, that the Bible does not teach on the atmosphere as such. Faulkner proceeds on that basis.
But most importantly, Faulkner is so biased in favor of an astrophysical conception of the Bible's Divine Revelation that he is willing that the Bible explicitly describes one or more astronomical concepts and, or, objects that he admits of which pre-'modern' humans can have had no natural knowledge...
Th[e] understanding that rāqîaʿ [is outer space] nicely
incorporates the Old Testament verses that speak of the heavens being
stretched or spread out—as in Job 9:8; Psalm 104:2; Isaiah 40:22,
42:5, 44:24, 45:12, 48:13, 51:13; Jeremiah 10:12, 51:15; and Zechariah
12:1. ( . . .) Certainly, those who wrote about the stretching of the
heavens or those who first read or heard it must have had some
understanding of what this meant. ( . . .) Since Genesis 1:8 equates
šāmayim with rāqîaʿ, and we know from the verb from which rāqîaʿ comes
means to beat or spread out, the best fit for understanding the
stretching of the heavens is with what God did on Day Two. ( . . .)
[T]he Bible implies that the boundary of the universe is accompanied
by water. ( . . .) This is borne out by Psalm 148:4, which speaks of
waters above the heavens still being there. We do not know who wrote
Psalm 148 or when they wrote it, but it almost certainly was long
after the Flood. That is to say, in the post-Flood world, the universe
is surrounded by water.
Additionally, Faulkner's count of the quantity of instances of (haš)šāmayim in Genesis 1 is exactly 'seven'. This count is short by three, for Faulkner claims that the final instance is that in v. 20. The three instances Faulkner misses are one each in vv. 26, 28, and 30. This is understandable given Faulkner's astrophysical bias. Such a bias very easily can prime the mind to scan the English text according mainly or only to contextual hints of astronomical-astrophysical matters. These three verses bear no such hints, nor do the verses immediately surrounding them.
This astronomical and astrophysical bias is, in a very deep way, short of the entire Genesis 1 account. If we gaze at the stars, we implicitly are caring for life and its support. This matches the textual heart of Genesis 1: it explicates on the luminaries only in terms of the Earth and her inhabitants. Most to the point, if we knew of no living planet (our own) from which to view the stars, we could not gaze at them in pure wonder, but often largely in an adverse sense of incompleteness, if not desperation. Like the beauty of an endless desert to a man who has no prospect of water, the stars then might seem very lacking in the “benevolence of beauty”.
So, to repeat: A knowledge of the atmosphere's cosmic preciousness is an essential part of a basic understanding of God's Cosmos. This is because the atmosphere is the greatest cosmically local providential object in support of life. It is so great partly because it is maintained by the life it helps support. This, in most general terms, may be compared to a human body's skin. The atmosphere's own function, in relation to the Sun's radiated energy, is to selectively moderate that energy, permitting to solid-and-liquid Earth only what of that energy is ideal to Earth's life. So the Earth, like a woman, is such that her man's touch must be moderated by her skin. There are profound reasons for skin, but I shall not expressly identify these in the present work. Suffice it that the entire present work identifies them implicitly.
By greatest providence, the ancient narrator begins his account of Earth, and her wider sky, with a maximum of water, and in this, of a minimum of initial Sunlight. Creaturely life, even like the Creator, is not heat and fury, but the special ability to moderate all things in its own interest.
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Reference
Faulkner, D. R. (2016): 'Thoughts on the rāqîa‘ and a Possible Explanation for the Cosmic Microwave Background', Answers Research Journal 9 (2016):57-65. https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/cosmology/thoughts-raqia-and-possible-explanation-cosmic-microwave-background/.
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