What is the meaning of the rainbow?

Rainbow. — Sign of God's unchanging covenant with the earth in mercy. Post-diluvian relationship. (Gen. 9:13-14; Ezek. 1:28.)

God established His covenant with Noah and his seed and put the token of the covenant in the clouds. The rainbow speaks of a passed judgment of His salvation and remembrance. Another universal judgment by water will never come again (verse 15). Another judgment is in store for this planet. "The world that was then, being overflowed with water, perished; but the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men" (2 Pet. 3:6-7).

The promise, which closes Genesis 8, was based upon the sacrifice, as also was the blessing which opens Genesis 9. God knew what man would again prove himself to be, but He guaranteed that there should be no further judgment of the sort just executed. The flood had been of such magnitude that for just over a year seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and even day and night, had been obliterated. This was never to occur again. Indeed Genesis 9:8-17 show that God established a definite covenant to this effect, the token of which is the rainbow.

This covenant made with Noah and all creation was unconditional. It was a covenant of promise, not depending on any faithfulness of the creature. It was something new. The words, "I do set My bow in the cloud," clearly infer that the phenomenon of a rainbow had never before been seen by mankind. This would appear strongly to support the thought we mentioned when considering Genesis 2:5-6 that until the time of the flood no rain had fallen on the earth but it had been watered by mist.

It is an unprofitable question, seeing that scripture has not furnished adequate evidence to decide it absolutely, whether the rainbow was then seen for the first time, or had been familiarly known to the early ages. One can readily conceive that the Creator may have reserved it for the days of Noah: a slight physical disposition could have hindered the phenomenon. But the language seems rather to favour the inference that, often as it may have been noticed before, God took it up now and established it as a covenant sign between Him and the creatures here below for everlasting generations. The least that can be drawn from the words is that God was now, since the deluge, pleased to graft on it a new and merciful meaning. For men might well tremble after that tremendous catastrophe when dark clouds veiled the skies, and the rain fell in torrents, and tidal waves rose overwhelmingly. An accusing conscience would the more loudly speak of what had been shortly before experienced so disastrously. Man naturally looks for it that what once was will surely recur; and the more if old sins still prevailed, and new evils sprang up.

Hence the immense comfort which God's goodness pledged in the bow He set in the cloud. It is not seen as the rule unless there be rain, of course; and it is only seen when the sun shines brightly at one's back from the opposite quarter of the sky. Thus no sign could be more appropriate. If the rain might awaken fears, the gorgeous bow was entitled to calm them; for God Himself thus deigned to assure man of His unfailing covenant. Indeed the accuracy is the more remarkable, as its terms run, "It shall come to pass when I bring clouds over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud, and I will remember my covenant which is between me and you and every living soul among all flesh." For "rain" does not seem absolutely indispensable, but "cloud" is. So Col. Sykes, treating of the Meteorology of the Deccan (Phil. Trans. 1835), describes a rainbow which he saw from the top of a perpendicular precipice, among the Ghauts, overlooking the Concan, on a fog cloud. "A circular rainbow appeared, quite perfect, of the most vivid colours, one half above the level on which I stood, the other below it. Shadows in distinct outline of myself, my horse, and people, appeared in the centre of the circle, as in a picture to which the bow formed a resplendent frame." The same witness describes a white rainbow which he saw in a fog bank near Poonah: "Suddenly I found myself emerge from the fog which terminated abruptly in a wall some hundred feet high. Shortly after sunrise I turned my horse's head homewards, and was surprised to discover in the mural termination of the fog-bank a perfect rainbow, defined in its outline, but destitute of prismatic "colours." Such a white rainbow has been seen by other travellers, and in other lands; but it is not so uncommon as with the usual colours on a fog-cloud. But all attest the faithfulness of God even if man forgets its meaning. "No more shall the waters become a flood to destroy all flesh." _

And how affecting the condescension of the words that follow! "And the bow shall be in the cloud, and I will look upon it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living soul of all flesh that is upon the earth." It was much that man should see it: how gracious that God too would look on! Nor is this all; but it is added, "And God said to Noah, This is the sign of the covenant which I have established between me and between all flesh that is upon the earth." How good is the God we adore! Such repeated assurance is only the more to be prized by vain forgetful man.

And now He establishes His covenant, and His bow is set in the cloud, the token of the covenant. This, I take it, is the reason that the rainbow is round about the throne in Revelation 4. It is the covenant with creation seen there, as of old in Genesis. Only it is "like unto an emerald." The presence of the bow in Revelation means that God's covenant with creation is remembered that there should not be a flood again. The bow is given to be for a token of the covenant rather than that it was created then. God might, of course, have put plenty of clouds above the earth without a rainbow. He says, "I do set my bow."

Here accordingly God establishes His covenant with Noah and his sons on a footing which ignores all question of the soul or moral considerations. Where these enter as at the close of the chapter, the divine title is changed in harmony with what is revealed. But in the previous portion all is general as expressly as possible. God never forgets His rights as Creator and Preserver; and even when our blessed Lord brought out heavenly and eternal things, He was far from teaching us to despise the birds of the heaven or the lilies of the field, or God's care in either case. Their Creator and Preserver was our heavenly Father, without Whom not even one sparrow falls upon the earth. No doubt the Christian is called to things higher beyond comparison; but God did not omit to testify and teach His people His mind as to the least of His creatures in the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets, of which last the closing verse of Jonah is not the least remarkable. And the New Testament is quite as clear as the Old in keeping before us the blessed deliverance which He will surely effect for all the creation groaning and travailing in pain together until now. It waits for the manifestation of the Second man, Head over all things to the church which is His body. For when Christ, our life, shall be manifested, then shall we also with Him be manifested in glory.

Meanwhile God Who remembered not Noah only but every living thing and the cattle with him in the ark, covenants not only with Noah and his sons and with his seed after them, but with every living creature, cattle, bird, and beast; and He so establishes His covenant as to cut off from every heart that trusted in Him the least fear of destruction of all flesh by a deluge any more, or of any such dealing with the earth. Without such a covenant, what could guilty man expect but repeated strokes of the same judgment which had just taken them all away? Would not old sins renewed and fresh sins added provoke like punishment? Not so; God's covenant with man and the earth interposes absolutely. "I have sworn that the waters of Noah shall no more go over the earth." He will certainly judge and destroy otherwise, as He warns elsewhere; but it was no small comfort, when the world that now is began after the deluge, that God assured their trembling hearts against a blow so naturally and justly to be dreaded.

1895 321 Genesis 9:1-7 set out the blessing of God pronounced on Noah and his sons for the world that now is. Man henceforth was allowed animal food, yet forbidden to eat blood due to God; and government was put for the first time into man's hand for the protection of human life and the vindication of God where it was taken. Now Gen. 9:8-11 give the covenant God established with mankind and every creature set under man: the largest covenant God ever made, and still subsisting under a merciful pledge that cannot fail. Neither the one nor the other applied to the ante-diluvian earth. In the verses that follow (12-17) God deigns to give a sign or token of His covenant with the earth. Of a covenant with Noah we first hear in Gen. 6:18.

"And God said, This is the token of the covenant ..I do set my bow in the cloud … and I will remember my covenant," The whole creation rests, as to its exemption from a second deluge, on the eternal stability of God's covenant, of which the bow is the token; and it is happy to bear in mind, that when the bow appears, the eye of God rests upon it; and man is cast not upon his own imperfect and most uncertain memory, but upon God's. "I" says God, "Will remember." "How sweet to think of what God will, and what He will not remember! He will remember His own covenant, but He will not remember His people's sins. The cross, which ratifies the former, puts away the latter. The belief of this gives peace to the troubled and uneasy conscience.

"And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud." Beautiful and most expressive emblem! The beams of the sun, reflected from that which threatens judgement, tranquillise the heart, as telling of God's covenant, God's salvation, and God's remembrance. Precious, most precious sunbeams, deriving additional beauty from the very cloud which reflects them! How forcibly does this bow in the cloud remind us of Calvary. There a cloud indeed — a dark, thick, heavy cloud of judgement discharging itself upon the sacred head of the Lamb of God - a cloud so dark, that even at mid-day "there was darkness over all the earth." But, blessed be God, faith discerns, in that heaviest cloud that ever gathered, the most brilliant and beauteous bow that ever appeared, for it sees the bright beams of God's eternal love darting through the awful gloom, and reflected in the cloud. It hears, too, the words, "it is finished," issuing from amid the darkness, and in those words it recognises the perfect ratification of God's everlasting counsels, not only as to creation, but the tribes of Israel and the Church of God.

In this day of grace there is always a bow in the cloud. We may be, and sometimes are, so occupied with what is most manifest, the cloud, that we do not discern its heavenly accompaniment; but there it is. Bright and lovely, it stretches from heaven to earth. "All things work together for good to them that love God." Yes, all things. This is the bow in the cloud. What a wide expanse this "all things" opens up to us! Even pain is God's servant for good to a believer; and so is an earthquake in the world, or a moral convulsion or heresy in the Church. (1 Cor. 11:19.)

A great and strong wind may "rend the mountains," and "break in pieces the rocks before the Lord." This may be followed by an earthquake, and the earthquake by a fire; but though they are the visible cloud, we must not be wholly occupied with these. (1 Kings 19.) The question for us is, What has the Lord to say to us in them? The object to Him is His people, and we must listen for the "still small voice." This is the bow in the cloud. If God has swept away man once in the judgment of the flood, the cloud, whatever it be, is afresh declaring His estimate of the first man. If mercy has declared itself, and we are spared, still we must never forget that His estimate of what we are stands recorded, and that very cloud afresh witnesses to it. And the bow in the cloud declares His faithfulness to His promise; for "His mercy endureth for ever." We are on the ground of MERCY and if we forget it, He does not. "It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of GOD THAT SHEWETH MERCY." Rom. 9:16.) We look at the cloud; God looks at the bow. What grace is here! He says, "And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it." The bow tells of God's unchangeable faithfulness and mercy when all is over with man. This is the ground we are upon with God.

"I bring a cloud … I do set My bow." We may not sever these two, nor look at one apart from the other. If it is good for us to be reminded that man (himself and his works) is only fit for judgment, it is good also to be reminded of what God is, or the soul must be overwhelmed with despair. Let us, then, "cease … from man, whose breath is in his nostrils" (Isa. 2:22), and look at what God is looking at. "I will look upon it."

But further. The Lord God makes a covenant with Noah, and with all the creatures around him, that He will secure the earth from a second Flood. And in token of this, he hangs the Bow in the Cloud, up there as under His own eye, that He may look on it, and thus remember His promise. What thoughts and words are these; and yet these are the words of the Spirit, telling us of the intimate ways of God with us, and our souls, and our circumstances! The Cloud might threaten, and swell itself with water; the Bow should control it. The Cloud might frown; the Bow should smile. The Lord should be refreshed and glorified now in the counsels of His grace, as at the first He had been in the works of His hands. And the creation was set, not in fallible, but in sure conditions.

One more point must be noticed. By virtue of the sacrifice God established. His covenant with Noah, his sons, their seed after them, and with every living thing that was with them, of fowl, cattle, beasts of the earth, and all that went forth of the ark. The earth and all connected with it thus shared in the benefits of the sacrifice; as far as the consequences of man's sin had reached on earth, there would be felt the blessed results of the burnt-offering. "And the bow shall be in the cloud! and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth." Earth besides man was interested in the covenant, as the creature will one day rejoice in the liberty of the glory of the sons of God.