Firmament is a name for the sky or the heavens, generally use in the context of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. In the Hebrew Old Testament, the word used for "firmament" is "raqiya`" (pronounced rä·kē'·ah) meaning an extended solid surface or flat expanse, considered to be a hemisphere above the Earth. The word is derived from the Hebrew raqa, meaning "to spread out" by stamping, stretching, beating, or making broad., e.g. the process of making a metal bowl by hammering metal flat, or "to make a spreading (of clouds)". Thus, in the Bible, Elihu asks Job “Can you beat out [raqa] the vault of the skies, as he does, hard as a mirror of cast metal (Job 37:18)?” In the Vulgate, the word firmamentum is used, which in Classical Latin means a strengthening or support. For Jewish and Christian astronomers familiar with Greek astronomy, the firmament was the eighth sphere carrying the fixed stars and surrounding the seven spheres of the planets in the geocentric model.