Commentaire sur Le Cantique des Cantiques 3:6: Rachi, Rambam, Ibn Ezra et plus

Who is this ascending from the wilderness. When I was traveling in the wilderness and the pillar of fire and the cloud were going before me, killing snakes and scorpions and burning the thorns and thistles to make a straight path, and [when] the cloud and the smoke were ascending, the nations saw them, and marveled at my greatness, and they would say, “Who is this?” i.e., “How great is she [Bnei Yisroel] who is ascending from the wilderness, etc.!”

Who is she who comes up from the desert like columns of smoke: When journeying before the Israelite camp, the shekhinah seemed like a column of smoke, rising upwards and ascending. The verse states “smoke” for she is derived from fire, as it is written: “Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke, for the Lord had come down upon it in fire, the smoke rose like the smoke of a kiln” [Exod. 19:18]. The shekhinah receives her emanative energy primarily from the left side, from darkness.⁸⁴“Darkness” and “fire” here refer to din, the force of divine judgment. Darkness is elemental fire, as it says concerning it: “Let me not see this great fire anymore, lest I die” [Deut. 18:16]. And it says: “When you heard the voice from amidst the darkness” [Deut. 5:19].

With palm-like pillars of smoke. Tall and erect as a palm tree [=תָּמָר.