A depiction of an upsetting circumstance which can’t be settled and which gobbles up the entirety of one’s assets. In the book of Revelation where it happens much of the time, this is a picture of heck, the spot of the Beast. “And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.” Revelation 9:2 KJV