Hosea 13:3

"Therefore they shall be as the morning cloud, and as the dew that passeth away, as the chaff that is driven with the whirlwind out of the threshing floor, and as the smoke out of the chimney."

In this passage, God speaks in the third person of Israel, "as though addressing a court concerning the accused."[10] Four distinct and eloquent similes are used here to stress the impermanence of the doomed state.

"As the morning cloud ..." This figure is used in both testamentst and notably by James (James 4:13ff) in the New Testament. Nothing could be more ephemeral than a vanishing cloud in the early morning.

"As the chaff that is driven ..." The chaff was made a symbol of the lost in the New Testament (Matthew 3:12). In the ancient custom of threshing grain, the threshing-floors were usually placed on high elevations readily accessible to the wind. The chaff was absolutely worthless, fit for any disposal of it that was available. The application of such similies as these to Israel indicated their approaching demise as a political entity upon earth.

"And as the dew that passeth early away ..." The very slight dampness resulting from even a heavy dew could last only a few minutes under the blazing suns of the Middle East.

"And as the smoke out of the chimney ..." Questions raised by uncertainties of the the Hebrew text of the O.T. have led to various readings of this place. The Revised Standard Version has, "Like smoke from a window." Ward rendered it, "Smoke from a hole in the wall."[11] It is true, of course, that the ancient chimney's were merely windows, or openings in the wall, but they were the originals from which our word "chimney" is derived; and therefore there is no improvement in departing from the KJV and ASV. Besides that, smoke out of a hole in the wall, or a window, in present-day thinking, would indicate a house on fire, something that is not hinted at in the text. However rendered, the passage refers to the transitory and ephemeral status of the onceproud Israel, which through gross idolatry had turned away from the Lord and forfeited her true life. Like the wisp of vapor from a smoking chimney, Israel would soon be swallowed up in oblivion.