Bible Dictionaries

Fausset's Bible Dictionary

Whirlwind

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).