Arabic, where it means: _huc illuc latus, agitatus fuit,---fluctuavit._
(Compare the thorough demonstration by _Scheid_, _ad cant. Hisk._ p.
159 sqq.) [Hebrew: timrvt] can accordingly signify only "clouds"
or "_vortices_." (In Arabic, [Hebrew: mvr] means "dust agitated
by the wind.") The connection of this signification with that of
"_palpehrae_," "eye-lids," in which it occurs in the Talmudic and
Rabbinical languages, is very obvious. They were so called from their
continual motion hither and thither. Such a connection, however, we
must the more easily be able to prove, because that Talmudic and
Rabbinical use of the word cannot be derived from any other root than
an ancient Hebrew one. The [Greek: atmis] of the LXX. likewise leads to
our interpretation, rather than to the prevailing one. The former is,
in the only passage in which [Hebrew: timrvt] occurs, besides the one
under consideration, and where it likewise occurs in the connection
with [Hebrew: ewN], viz., in Song of Sol. iii. 6, at least as suitable
as the latter. We have to think here of such phenomena as those which
are described in Exod. xix. 18: "And Mount Sinai was altogether on a
smoke, because the Lord had descended upon [Pg 341] it in fire, and the
smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace." Here, as well as
there, the fire, and the accompanying smoke, represent, in a visible
manner, the truth that God is [Greek: pur katanaliskon], Heb. xii. 29.
The clouds of smoke are the sad forerunners of the clouds of smoke of
the divine judgments upon the enemies, and of the fire of war, in the
form of which the former commonly appear. Compare Is. ix. 18, 19: "And
they mount up like the lifting up of smoke.... And the people became as
the fuel of fire; no man spareth his brother." The belief--which
pervades all antiquity--that the angry Deity announced the breaking in
of judgments through the symbolical language of nature, is very
remarkable. This belief cannot be a mere delusion, but must have a deep
root in the heart. Nature is the echo and the reflection of the
disposition of man. If there prevail within him a fearful expectation
of things to come, because he feels his own sin, and that of his
people, all things external harmonize with that expectation; and, most
of all, that which is the natural image and symbol of divine punitive
justice, which would not, however, be acknowledged as such, were it not
for the interpreting voice within. Having regard to t