Fire worship overspread Asia, and Jehovah, like Moloch, became a god of fire. "There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured; coals were kindled by it" (2 Sam. xxii, 9). He appeared to Abram as "a smoking furnace and a burning lamp" (Gen. xv, 17). He revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush. "The bush burned with fire, but the bush was not consumed" (Ex. iii, 2). When David called to him "he answered him from heaven by fire" (1 Ch. xxi, 26). To the fleeing Israelites he was a "pillar of fire" (Ex. xiv, 24). "The Lord descended upon" Sinai "in fire" (xix, 18). When he appeared upon Horeb "the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of heaven" (Deut. iv, 11), "and the Lord spake out of the midst of the fire" (12). "The cloud of the Lord was upon the tabernacle by day, and fire was on it by night" (Ex. xl, 38). On the Jewish altar for centuries the sacred fire was kept burning. When Aaron, Gideon, Solomon and Elijah made offerings to Jehovah "there came a fire out from before the Lord, and consumed" the offerings (Lev. ix, 24; Jud. vi, 21; 2 Ch. vii, 1; 1 K. xviii, 38). Elijah was translated in "a chariot of fire" (2 K. ii, 11). Elisha was surrounded by "horses and chariots of fire" (vi, 17). With fire he consumed his enemies. "The Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire" (Gen. xix, 24). When Nadab and Abihu "offered strange fire before the Lord" (Lev. x, 1), "there went out fire from before the Lord and devoured them" (2). When the Israelites displeased him at Taberah, "the fire of the Lord burnt among them and consumed them" (Num. xi, 1). When the hosts of Satan encompassed the Christian saints, "fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them" (Rev. xx, 9). "It is now a matter of demonstration," says M. Soury, "that at the time of the Exodus from Egypt, in the desert, and even in the time of Judges, light and fire were not to the Israelites mere symbols of the deity, but were the deity himself."