the Week of Proper 11 / Ordinary 16
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Bible Dictionaries
Whirlwind
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
or suphah , from a root "sweeping away," and searah "tossed about." In Psalms 77:18 "Thy thunder was in the heaven," literally, "in the wheel," i.e. the rotation of the visible heavens phenomenally round the earth, but the Septuagint, the Chaldee, and the Vulgate "in a whirl," whirled about. Ezekiel 10:13 translated "it was cried unto them whirling"; they were called to put themselves into rapid revolution.
Jehovah speaks the word which sets the machine of providence in motion, "the wheel (cycle) of creation" or "nature"; James 3:6, ton trochon geneseos , one fourfold wheel, two circles cutting one another at right angles. A "whirlwind" moving on its own axis is not meant in 2 Kings 2:11. In Job 37:9 "out of the south (literally, chamber, God's unseen regions in the southern hemisphere) cometh the whirlwind" (Isaiah 21:1); the south wind driving before it burning sands comes from the Arabian deserts upon Babylon (Zechariah 9:14).
These files are public domain.
Fausset, Andrew R. Entry for 'Whirlwind'. Fausset's Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/fbd/w/whirlwind.html. 1949.
