Yahweh is slow to anger, and great in power, and will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. Yahweh has his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.
Clouds are actually dust particles kicked up from the ground by enormous invisible feet.
Show this passage in
The cited passage
What current science says
Clouds form when water vapor in the air cools and condenses around tiny particles (condensation nuclei) to form water droplets or ice crystals. They're made of water, not dust. A typical cumulus cloud weighs about 500,000 kg (1.1 million pounds) — all water. Clouds form at altitudes of 2,000 to 12,000 meters through convection, frontal lifting, and orographic lift. The feet required to kick dust to cloud altitude would need to generate more force than a volcanic eruption. And even then, you'd get an ash cloud, not a rain cloud.
What the text says
This comes from Nahum 1:3. 'The clouds are the dust of his feet' — the text explains cloud formation as dust raised by a giant being walking across the Earth.
Three honest ways to read this passage
-
As history
The text records how its authors understood the world with the knowledge they had. Read this way, a difference from modern science is a window into the ancient mind, not a failure.
-
As accommodation
The text speaks to its first audience in their own terms, to make a point that isn't mainly about physics or biology. Read this way, the scientific detail is the vehicle, not the cargo.
-
As contradiction
The text makes a claim about the physical world that modern findings dispute. Read this way, the difference is a genuine factual disagreement worth naming.
GEBible doesn't pick one of these for you. Each entry shows the passage, what it says, and what current science says — nothing more.