The concepts encompass purpose, divine will, and the emphasis on the structuring of the world for the existence of human beings.
Each heaven may be alternatively described as a firmament, or a physical edifice that separates the earth from the cosmic ocean above it.
The same motif is used in the Bible as well.References to heavens and earth constitute a literary device known as a merism, where two opposites or contrasting terms are used to refer to the totality of something.
In Arabic texts generally and in the Quran, the merism of "the heavens and the earth" is used to refer to the totality of creation.
[4][5] A similar merism in the Quran to describe the entire terrestrial space is "the dry land and the sea," al-barr wa-l-baḥr (Q 6:59, 63, 97; 10:22; 17:70; 27:63; 29:65; 30:41; 31:31–32).
The expression of seven earths is much less common than that of seven heavens in the ancient world, with only seemingly implicit references to it in much earlier Sumerian texts.
The earth is also frequently compared, as a site for human flourishing, to comfortable pieces of flat furniture such as a carpet, bed, or couch.
[13][14][15][10] The Quranic heaven(s), reflecting their near eastern and biblical cosmological contexts, are firmaments, referring to a solid structure (or barrier) in the sky whose function it is to separate the earth from the heavenly ocean above (visible as the blue sky), and more broadly, given its expanse, to separate the upper from the lower waters (which may correspond to the two sweet and salty seas, the baḥrān, referred to throughout the Quran like in Q 25:53, 27:61, 35:12, 55:19[16]).
As large as it already is, its width is still constantly broadening (Kor 51, 47).Another controversy has concerned the Quranic view on the relationship between the firmament and the pillars holding it up.
Decharneux has recently argued that the latter interpretation is correct, and has related it to a similar cluster of ideas in the homilies of Jacob of Serugh, a Syriac poet of the 6th century, particularly in his Hexaemeron.
[21] Likewise, a commonality shared between the Quran and the Hexaemeron of the fourth-century bishop Basil of Caesarea is in describing the firmament as having been created out of smoke in the creation week.
Q 37:6–10; 55:33; 67:5; 72:1–9)Patricia Crone notes that, like jinn, the demons of the Testament of Solomon ascend to the firmament and eavesdrop on heavenly secrets; as did demons of Zoroastrian cosmology, who in addition encounter a heavenly defense systems (as did Islamic jinn).
Then, He mounted (upward) to the sky [thumma stawā 'ilā l-samā'i], while it was (still) smoke [wa-hiya dukhānun], and said to it and to the earth, 'Come, both of you, willingly or unwillingly!'