Genesis 1:6-7
Then God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day.
Like Day 1, Day 2 at first seems fairly simple in dealing with separating waters both above and below the firmament, which God called Heaven. Since we are dealing with water, it bears mentioning that our first encounter with water occurred when we found it sandwiched between the Spirit of God and the darkness on the face of the deep. We will learn more about water in Day 3 when God finally gives it the name Seas, but for now we must draw what meaning we can from the relationships between the symbols as the story presents them.
We know from the Creation Story that God brings the land out of the waters and that He creates man on the solid Earth. Because God only calls good those things that He divides from or creates within the water, we can conclude water exists as a natural state of fallenness from which God must work in order to redeem anything worth calling good.
Since the second Millennial Day falls between 3000 – 2000 BC we know that because Adam sinned that man now dwells within this state of fallenness. It just so happens that Approximately 770 years after Adam died, around the year 2304 BC, God brings the Great Flood upon the earth. This deals directly with the division of water above and below the earth. To accomplish the flood, God brings the waters back together and then, in Genesis 8:3, causes them to return.
But while the Great Flood does deal with the water, God is also describing something more profound that scripture only touches upon prior to the flood.
Recall that God warned the dragon, Satan, that one of man’s seed would one day bruise his head. The dragon apparently took this threat so seriously that Cain was tempted to kill his brother Abel after Abel found favor in God’s eyes. But other sons were born to Adam and Eve and to their children and to their grandchildren. If Satan intended to thwart God’s will and prevent his own defeat, then his problem was quickly multiplying before him quite literally.
That is when the dragon, being more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made(Genesis 3:1), introduced the very first campaign to drive a species to extinction by breeding them out. We read in Genesis 6 that the sons of God took women for themselves as wives. These sons of God were divine beings that appeared in human form to breed with human females. As strange as all this sounds, we must recognize that we are dealing with creatures that existed prior to the creation under the darkness on the face of the waters of the deep, so they could not have been human, as human life could not exist in that state.
Scripture chooses not to expound on these creatures, except in context to what was prior to the flood. But we are told that their wives bore them sons, called the Nephilim, which our English translations say were “mighty men who were of old, men of renown.” Actually, that word “old” is the Hebrew word olam, which means they lived a very long time. Take careful note that nothing is mentioned regarding any female offspring. If you are a heavenly being able to take on a form capable of mating with a human woman, and if your agenda is to breed out the seed of Adam, then the best way you can accomplish that task is to produce only male offspring, who live a very long time and that are themselves capable of sowing a seed other than Adam’s. Eventually, the only seed you have left would be the descendants of the Nephilim and since they have no female offspring, the human race would be diluted by a seed other than the one given to Eve by Adam. The consequence of this would spell victory over God’s spoken curse against the Dragon, for if there were no more descendants of Adam, then there could be no seed to bruise the dragon’s head. But Satan’s double-edged sword does not stop there, when all of Adam’s seed is bred out, there would be no more women, and thus the human race and Nephilim would expire. There would be no remnant of any of those created in the image of God.
Sun Tzu is famous for his quote, “Know your enemy.” It is evident that prior to the creation of the world God knew how the dragon would attempt to thwart God’s will. Let’s see how we can know that. We know that the waters from Day 1 existed between the Spirit of God and the darkness on the face of the deep. We know that water represents the state of fallenness. Therefore, in order for God to prevent Satan’s breeding program from succeeding, He would have to divide the waters that represented the fallen sons of God living under the darkness on the face of the deep and their seed, the Nephilim, from the waters which represented Adam’s seed. One set of waters would be raised above the firmament which is heaven(signifying redemption), while the other set of waters would be kept below heaven(signifying separation).
In fact, when God preserved Noah and his family, He did exactly that. The line of Adam was preserved through Noah and the seven other members that he took with him on the ark which floated over the surface of the waters of the flood, which just so happens to be where the Spirit of God moved on Day 1. While the Nephilim and their diluted seed perished under the flood that just so happens to be the location we find the darkness on the face of the deep from Day 1. But consider the flood itself that the Bible claims covered the surface of the Earth. With Noah above and the descendants below, there was an expanse between them. Interestingly, the word firmament in Genesis 1:6 is the Hebrew word raqia, which means extended surface or expanse; a word quite befitting the floodwaters covering the surface of the Earth.
Day 2 describes two fallen states: Adam’s seed and the seed of the sons of God, separated by God through the Great Flood such that the waters were divided from the waters. Thus was the prophecy of Day 2 fulfilled through the actions of the sons of God, the spawning of the Nephilim and the Great Flood that God used to eradicate them.