Smoke

The umbrella collects the figurative side of smoke — two small windows, one into the throne-room of Yahweh, the other into the vanishing of a faithless people. In each, smoke does the same work: it stands for what fills, and for what disappears.

Smoke that fills the temple

In the throne-vision of Isaiah, the seraph's cry shakes the sanctuary itself: "And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who cried, and the house was filled with smoke" (Isa 6:4). Smoke here is the visible sign of Yahweh's presence inside the temple — the same atmospheric weight that earlier theophanies attach to Sinai and the cloud over the tabernacle, now resting on the divine throne.

Smoke that passes away

Hosea uses smoke for the opposite movement. Where Isaiah's smoke fills, Hosea's smoke vanishes: "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" (Hos 13:3). The image is one of four parallel similes — cloud, dew, chaff, smoke — all naming things that look substantial for a moment and are gone. Ephraim's promised future is to be one of them.