24 Bible Verses About the Sky

Genesis 1:6-8

“And God said, ‘Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.’ So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault ‘sky.’ And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.”

Reflection: On the second day of creation God sets a vault between two bodies of water and names it “sky”. Where the NIV has “vault”, the King James Version has “firmament”, and the name God gives it is “Heaven”: “And God called the firmament Heaven” (Genesis 1:8, KJV). Later in the chapter God sets the sun, moon and stars “in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth” (Genesis 1:17).

Nehemiah 9:6

“You alone are the LORD. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to everything, and the multitudes of heaven worship you.”

Reflection: The Levites lead this prayer on a day when the Israelites gathered in sackcloth to read the Law and confess their sins (Nehemiah 9:1-3). It opens Israel’s history with creation, naming “the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host” before the earth and the seas, and then moves straight to God’s choosing of Abram (9:7).

Isaiah 40:22

“He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in.”

Reflection: God sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, where its people look “like grasshoppers”, and stretches out the sky like a canopy and a tent. The next verse applies the same contrast to rulers: he “reduces the rulers of this world to nothing” (40:23).

Deuteronomy 33:26

“There is no one like the God of Jeshurun, who rides across the heavens to help you and on the clouds in his majesty.”

Reflection: The line comes near the end of the blessing Moses pronounced on the Israelites “before his death” (33:1). God rides across the heavens and on the clouds “to help you”, and the following verse adds, “The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.”

Job 26:7-9

“He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing. He wraps up the waters in his clouds, yet the clouds do not burst under their weight. He covers the face of the full moon, spreading his clouds over it.”

Reflection: Job, replying to Bildad (Job 25:1; 26:1), lists what God does in the sky: he spreads the northern skies over empty space, holds water in clouds that do not burst, and covers the full moon with cloud. Job ends the list by calling these “but the outer fringe of his works; how faint the whisper we hear of him!” (26:14).

Job 37:18

“can you join him in spreading out the skies, hard as a mirror of cast bronze?”

Reflection: Elihu, who waited to speak because the three friends were older than he (Job 32:4-6), asks whether Job helped God spread out the skies, “hard as a mirror of cast bronze”. He follows the question with “we cannot draw up our case because of our darkness” (37:19), and a few lines later describes the sun bright in the skies “after the wind has swept them clean” (37:21).

Psalm 19:1

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.”

Reflection: David’s psalm says the heavens speak without words: “They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth” (19:3-4). The psalm then follows the sun, which rises at one end of the heavens and runs its circuit to the other, before turning in verse 7 to the law of the Lord.

Psalm 8:3-4

“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?”

Reflection: Addressed to God, this psalm of David looks at the moon and stars, “the work of your fingers”, and asks why God pays attention to human beings at all. Verse 5 continues that God has made them “a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor”.

Psalm 148:1-4

“Praise the LORD. Praise the LORD from the heavens; praise him in the heights above. Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his heavenly hosts. Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you shining stars. Praise him, you highest heavens and you waters above the skies.”

Reflection: The psalm calls on everything above to praise the Lord: angels, the heavenly hosts, sun, moon, stars, the highest heavens and the “waters above the skies”. Verse 5 gives the reason, “for at his command they were created”, and from verse 7 the call turns to the earth, including lightning, hail, snow and clouds.

Isaiah 40:26

“Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.”

Reflection: God tells the people to look up and ask who made the stars. He brings them out “one by one”, calls each by name, and “not one of them is missing”. The verse before asks, “To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?” (40:25).

Job 38:31-33

“Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades? Can you loosen Orion’s belt? Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons or lead out the Bear with its cubs? Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you set up God’s dominion over the earth?”

Reflection: The Lord answers Job “out of the storm” (38:1) with questions Job cannot answer, and these ones name star groups: the Pleiades, Orion and the Bear with its cubs. Job cannot bind or loosen them, bring the constellations out in their seasons, or set out “the laws of the heavens”.

Genesis 15:5

“He took him outside and said, ‘Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’”

Reflection: Abram has complained that he is childless and that a servant will inherit his estate (15:2-3). God takes him outside, tells him to count the stars, and says, “So shall your offspring be.” The next verse records that “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness”. Romans 4:3 quotes it as Scripture: “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”

Deuteronomy 4:19

“And when you look up to the sky and see the sun, the moon and the stars—all the heavenly array—do not be enticed into bowing down to them and worshiping things the LORD your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven.”

Reflection: Moses reminds Israel that they “saw no form of any kind” when God spoke at Horeb (4:15), and forbids images of people, animals, birds or fish. The sun, moon and stars come next. The verse expects Israel to look up at them (“when you look up to the sky”) and forbids bowing down to what God “has apportioned to all the nations under heaven”.

Matthew 16:2-3

“When evening comes, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red,’ and in the morning, ‘Today it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.”

Reflection: The Pharisees and Sadducees test Jesus by asking for “a sign from heaven” (16:1). He points out that they read a red evening sky as fair weather and a red, overcast morning sky as a storm, yet cannot interpret “the signs of the times”. He refuses them any sign “except the sign of Jonah” (16:4).

Psalm 36:5

“Your love, LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies.”

Reflection: God’s love reaches to the heavens and his faithfulness to the skies, and the next verse carries the measure down to the earth: his righteousness is “like the highest mountains”, his justice “like the great deep” (36:6). Psalm 57:10 and Psalm 108:4 repeat the line about the skies almost word for word.

Psalm 103:11

“For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him;”

Reflection: The verse measures God’s love for “those who fear him” by the height of the sky, and the next measures forgiveness by distance across the earth: “as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” (103:12).

Isaiah 55:9

“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Reflection: God’s ways and thoughts are as far above human ones as the heavens are above the earth, and the verse before says it plainly: “my thoughts are not your thoughts”. The following verses turn to the rain and snow that come down from heaven and water the earth, and compare them to God’s word, which “will not return to me empty” (55:11).

Jeremiah 31:37

“This is what the LORD says: ‘Only if the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth below be searched out will I reject all the descendants of Israel because of all they have done,’ declares the LORD.”

Reflection: God ties his commitment to Israel to something no one can do: measure the heavens above or search out the foundations of the earth. Verses 35-36 make the same argument from the sun, moon and stars: Israel would cease to be a nation before God “only if these decrees vanish from my sight”.

Proverbs 25:3

“As the heavens are high and the earth is deep, so the hearts of kings are unsearchable.”

Reflection: This proverb, from the collection of Solomon’s sayings compiled by the men of Hezekiah (25:1), uses the height of the sky and the depth of the earth for something no one can search out: the heart of a king. Verse 2 sets it up: “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.”

Acts 1:9-11

“After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. ‘Men of Galilee,’ they said, ‘why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.’”

Reflection: Jesus is taken up from the Mount of Olives (1:12) while the apostles watch, and a cloud hides him. Two men in white ask why they stand “looking into the sky” and say that Jesus “will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven”. Just before, Jesus had told the apostles that it was not for them to know “the times or dates” (1:7).

Matthew 24:30

“Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.”

Reflection: Jesus is answering the disciples’ question on the Mount of Olives about “the sign of your coming and of the end of the age” (24:3). The verse before describes the sun darkened and the stars falling from the sky, and “coming on the clouds of heaven” echoes Daniel 7:13, where one like a son of man comes “with the clouds of heaven”.

1 Thessalonians 4:17

“After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.”

Reflection: Paul is writing about believers who “have fallen asleep” (4:15). When the Lord comes down from heaven, the dead in Christ rise first, and those still alive are caught up with them “in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air”. The next verse tells the Thessalonians to “encourage one another with these words” (4:18).

Daniel 12:3

“Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.”

Reflection: The verse follows a promise that “multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt” (12:2). The wise will shine “like the brightness of the heavens”, and those who lead many to righteousness like the stars.

Revelation 21:1

“Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth,’ for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.”

Reflection: John sees “a new heaven and a new earth”; compare Isaiah 65:17, “See, I will create new heavens and a new earth.” In the chapter before, the earth and the heavens “fled from his presence” at the great white throne (20:11), and in the next verse the new Jerusalem comes “down out of heaven from God”.