Cloud. The shelter given, and refreshment of rain promised, by clouds give them their peculiar prominence in Oriental imagery. When a cloud appears, rain is ordinarily apprehended, and thus, the "cloud without rain," becomes a proverb for the man of promise without performance. Proverbs 16:15; Isaiah 18:4; Isaiah 25:5; Judges 1:12. Compare Proverbs 25:14.
The cloud is a figure of transitoriness, Job 30:15; Hosea 6:4, and of whatever intercepts divine favor, or human supplication. Lamentations 2:1; Lamentations 3:44. A bright cloud, at times, visited and rested on the Mercy-Seat, Exodus 29:42-43; 1 Kings 8:10-11; 2 Chronicles 5:14; Ezekiel 43:4, and was, by later writers, named Shechinah.