And the people cried unto Moses,.... And entreated him to pray for them, being frightened at the fire which consumed many of them, lest it should spread and become general among them:and when Moses prayed unto the Lord; as he did, in which he was a type of Christ, the mediator between God and man, the advocate of his people, an intercessor for transgressors:the fire was quenched; it stopped and proceeded no further; as through Christ's mediation God is pacified with his people for all that they have done, and his wrath, and all the effects of it, are turned away from them, and entirely cease with respect to them; or it "sunk down" into its place, as the Targum of Jonathan, as if it rose out of the earth.
This may serve to confirm the notion of its being a burning wind, to which the idea of sinking down and subsiding well agrees.