Dot product symbol for divergence, merely a convenience?

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As the title says, is it merely a convenience to write the divergence as a dot product? Is there an intuition on the relationship between the geometric interpretation of the divergence and that of the dot product?

I ask this also because the cross product is closely related to rotations, and the symbol is used for calculating the curl which is also related to rotations.

I tried to find a connection but I guess I need help on this one.