Not a generic concept. A specific lightning bolt aimed at a specific ship after a specific broken oath. Helios goes up to Olympus and threatens to take the sun down into the underworld if the killers of his cattle are not punished. Zeus, who does not want the sun in Hades, agrees. The next storm at sea is not weather. It is a sentence. The ship comes apart. Every man on board drowns or burns. Odysseus alone clings to the keel and rides the wreck to Charybdis and the fig tree above her. The whole sequence is the book’s neatest demonstration that the gods’ punishments are not abstract — they show up as lightning on a Tuesday.
Divine Retribution
Zeus's lightning, on time, on target. The crew broke the oath to Helios. The ship burns. Only one man survives.