"To-morrow about this time shall a measure of fine flour be sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria. Then a lord on whose hand the king leaned answered the man of God, and said, Behold, if the Lord would make windows in heaven, might this thing be?" So again Malachi exhorted the Jews after the Return from Babylon:-- "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in Mine house, and prove Me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it." In neither case can the "windows of heaven" have been meant by the speaker to convey the idea of the sluice-gates of an actual, solidly-built reservoir in the sky. One other cloud fact--their dissipation as the sun rises high in the heavens--is noticed in one of the most tender and pathetic passages in all the prophetic Scriptures. The Lord, by the mouth of Hosea, is mourning over the instability of His people. "O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee? For your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away." The winds of heaven were considered as four in number, corresponding to our own four "cardinal points." Thus the great horn of Daniel's he-goat was broken and succeeded by four notable horns toward the four winds of heaven; as the empire of Alexander the Great was divided amongst his four generals. In Ezekiel's vision of the dry bones the prophet prays, "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain;" and Jeremiah foretells that "the four winds from the four quarters of heaven" shall be brought upon Elam, and scatter its outcasts into every nation. The circulation of the winds is clearly set forth by the Preacher in the Book of Ecclesiastes. "The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits." Of the four quarters, the Hebrews reckoned the east as first. It was to the east that they supposed themselves always looking. The chief word for east, therefore, _kedem_, means "that which is before," "the front"; and the word next in use is, naturally, _mizrach_, the rising of the sun. The west is, as naturally, _mebō hasshemesh_, the going down of the sun; but as the Mediterranean Sea lay to the westward of Palestine "the sea" (_yam_) is frequently put instead of that point of the compass. With the east in front, the south becomes the right, and the north the left. The south also was _negeb_, the desert, since the desert shut in Palestine to the south, as the sea to the west. In opposition to _tsaphon_, the dark or hidden north, the south is _darom_, the bright and sunny region.