The Highest Heavens Explained — 1 Kings 8 Daily Word

Explore the Hebrew understanding of heaven’s three tiers in 1 Kings 8. Discover what the “highest heavens” means biblically and how ancient believers viewed God’s transcendent realm beyond our earthly atmosphere.

The Highest Heavens (הַשָּׁמַיִם וּשְׁמֵי הַשָּׁמָיִם)

This expression reflects the Hebrew cosmological worldview and serves as a superlative in Hebrew, referring to the highest and most expansive of all heavens. Furthermore, the phrase suggests a transcendent realm utterly beyond the reach of finite human beings. The Hebrews traditionally viewed the heavens as consisting of three tiers (Ps 148:4; Neh 9:6). That is, the heavens above the earth were understood to be composed of three distinct layers.

Among these, the visible sky that humans can perceive with the naked eye was regarded as the “First Heaven.” The First Heaven was understood as the space where various meteorological phenomena occur and where birds soar on their wings. Directly above it, the “Second Heaven” was conceived as the vast expanse of outer space — the realm where the sun, moon, and stars are situated, and where the heavenly storehouses supply the waters of the earth through the windows of heaven. Finally, the uppermost layer, the “Third Heaven,” was believed to be the dwelling place of God and His created beings, the angels, as well as the eternal home into which the resurrected righteous will one day enter and live forever (Deut 26:15).

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The Bible tells us that this is the place where the ascended Christ dwells, where He even now intercedes for His chosen people, and where the resurrected righteous will one day enter and live forever. The Bible also records that the apostle Paul had a mystical experience of being caught up to the “third heaven” in a vision (2 Cor 12:2).

Regarding this, the Reformer Calvin explained that the “third heaven” should not be understood literally as the third level of a three-tiered sky, but rather as the perfect and glorious supernatural heaven where God dwells.

For reference, among Jewish rabbis there were those who believed in a “seven-layered heaven” (seven heavens) or even a “ten-layered heaven” (in biblical literary terms, “7” and “10” are numbers of completeness). They believed that paradise existed in the highest tier (Luke 23:43).

Source: Dictionary of Biblical Cultural Background

The Floodgates of the Heavens 9

Originally published in Korean at bible2u.com