smoke: the rising haze of a fire, whether from a burning city, a mountain in flame, or a body breathing out heat
This is the ordinary Hebrew word for smoke, and it never strays far from the physical thing: something burning sends up a dark, rising column that hangs in the air and then thins away. Almost everything the word does grows straight out of that picture.
- Because smoke is what you see when a city is put to the torch, it becomes the standard sign of a place destroyed.
- Because it rises and dims the air, it becomes the veil that hides God on the mountain and fills the temple.
- Because a burning fire pushes smoke out through any opening, it becomes the exhaust of God's anger, pictured as heat venting from the nose.
- And because smoke has no substance and quickly disperses, it becomes the favorite image for anything that looks impressive for a moment and then is simply gone.
One fact ties the range together and explains its edges. The priests of Israel kept a separate set of words for the fragrant smoke of sacrifice at the altar (קטרת). So when a writer chose this word instead, the smoke in view is almost never the pleasant offering smoke: it is danger, judgment, mystery, or loss. That deliberate avoidance is why the smoke filling the temple in Isaiah's vision feels ominous rather than devotional, and why the smoke of a doomed city carries the weight of a verdict rather than a battle report.
The senses below are shades of one concrete idea, not different words. A competent reader translates every one of them with the single English word "smoke"; the differences are in what the smoke is doing, not in what the word means.