Do you realize that most of our bodies are water? And how much of what we find necessary for existence — the air we breathe, the food we eat — is made up largely of H2O? Would life be possible on Earth without water? Most of the Earth's surface is consumed by oceans and lakes and rivers and perma-snow on mountain tops and at the two poles.
Now I'm not implying here that there is some super-scientific information here that the ancients would never have understood. Ancient Near Eastern kings knew water supply and water management was essential for the survival of their societies. In ancient Mesopotamia (Babylonia and Assyria) they expended huge amounts of public funds and public labor, just to assure the countryside of a reliable and salt-free supply of irrigation water. In ancient Egypt the Nile provided a plentiful supply, which was fortunate because it seldom rained in ancient Egypt! But the Nile flooding required mighty efforts of engineering to manage and distribute the annual inundation. Irrigation in Babylonia, Nile management in Egypt — what about the land we call Israel? In earliest times rainfall was supplemented by wells. Remember Abraham? He disputed with the local king Abimelech about his rights to use a well that Abraham had been using (Gen 21:25-31). Remember Isaac? Much of the little the Book of Genesis tells about Isaac is concerned with his digging and naming of wells (Gen 26:15-33). In the hill country where the densest Israelite settlements were to be found it was too high for irrigation. But in the period of the Israelite monarchy water had to be brought from distant sources to supplement the fickle and often meager seasonal rains. And much later in Jesus' day Herod and his successors constructed huge aqueducts to bring water to Jerusalem. Here is a photo of one of the reservoirs (pools) used in Judea by the Hasmonean kings (2nd c. BC):
Yes, water was very important.
Humans cannot live without water, nor can the animals that God was planning to create. But water has to be supplied in the correct proportions and at the right time. Too much water can be as detrimental to God's creatures as too little and too late. Floods have been major catastrophes for humans in all ages. A dam must have its sluices to release a controlled amount of water. What in the vivid poetic language of the Hebrew Bible are called "the windows of heaven" (Gen 7:11; 8:2; Mal 3:10) that God opens to send rain are like sluices in God's reservoir. They give the right amount of rain and at the right seasons. When God sent the universal flood to destroy the apostate world in Noah's days, he "opened the windows of heaven and broke open the floodgates of the lower waters". All of this beautiful language tells us that our God is in complete control of his well-designed universe and uses it to fulfill his purposes, which are always good.
In order to create the home for His creatures (remember what we said earlier about chapters 1-3 being the constructing of the framework?) God first had to provide a mechanism for the steady and periodic release and supply of water. This he did, creating an upper reservoir and a lower one. The upper reservoir, which we today call cloud formations, is expressed here as "the waters above the expanse". The lower reservoir, which we today call the oceans, lakes, rivers, and the underground water table, our biblical text calls "the waters below the expanse".
Let us not worry about exactly how the ancient reader visualized this Cosmos with its zones and divisions. That is not important. God was basically telling His people in this chapter how he planned for their home, how he planned to supply them in a periodic manner (rains in season, rivers rising and flooding the fields, etc.— Gen 8:22) with the life-sustaining water that they needed.
God — like what he did on this day — is truly "good"!
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