Chimney

The chimney appears once in scripture, as the last of four images of dissolution applied to apostate Ephraim.

An Image of Vanishing

Hosea piles up four similes for what Ephraim is about to become — each one something briefly visible that is gone almost at once: "Therefore they will be as the morning cloud, and as the dew that passes early away, as the chaff that is driven with the whirlwind out of the threshing-floor, and as the smoke out of the chimney" (Hosea 13:3). The chimney is the household source of the smoke; the smoke itself is the point of the comparison — it rises briefly, then disperses and is no more. Ephraim's idolatry, like the smoke, has no staying substance.