the Fourth Week of Advent
free while helping to build churches and support pastors in Uganda.
Click here to learn more!
Bible Dictionaries
Sky
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or SKY.—In the two places (Matthew 16:2, Luke 12:56) where this word occurs in the Authorized Version of the Gospels, the term ‘heaven’ is substituted in Revised Version NT 1881, OT 1885 . There is no doubt that this tends towards consistency of rendering, as heaven is the translation of the Greek word (οὐρανός) elsewhere (see Redness of Sky). Where ‘sky’ is referred to in the Gospels it is the usual sense of cloud region or aerial expanse that is intended. This was the primary sense, indeed, of οὐρανός—the firmament, the vault above the earth. There is nothing in the two passages above to differentiate the ‘sky’ from the ‘heaven’ of Matthew 24:31. The word is the representative of the Hebrew שִׁמַיִם the upper regions. It reflects the old supposition that the firmament was an actual canopy above the earth. Still the figurative use of the term is indispensable even in scientific treatises (like, for instance, Tyndall’s Fragments of Science). In both passages the immediate reference is to the meteorological interpretations of the colour of the sky.
W. S. Kerr.
These files are public domain.
Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com. Used by Permission.
Hastings, James. Entry for 'Sky'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/s/sky.html. 1906-1918.
