The History of Exploding

Before combustible chemicals, would the culture have had a concept or a word that means exactly what explode means to us today? I'm trying to think what other chances to observe natural explosions would have been. You can think of volcanic eruptions, but that wouldn't be something that people observed often enough. It seems to me like many early writings about chemical combustion actually use words related to other much more common natural phenomenon such as thunder and lightning.