Genesis 9:14

that the bow shall be seen This should be rendered "and the bow is seen." The promise is not that the bow shall be seen whenever God sends clouds over the earth, but that, whenever He sends clouds and His bow is visible, then He will remember the covenant.

It is possible that this beautiful employment of the rainbow symbol may be the adaptation of a still earlier semi-mythological conception, according to which the God of Israel is represented in poetry as a warrior armed with bow and arrow (the lightnings are His arrows, cf. Psalms 7:12-13; Habakkuk 3:9-11); when His anger had passed, He hung His bow in the clouds. The rainbow does not, however, appear frequently in the imagery of Jewish poetry. In Ezekiel 1:28, and in Revelation 4:3; Revelation 10:1, it is mentioned in connexion with the appearances of Divine glory. As a feature in nature, it is referred to in Sir 43:12; Sir 50:7.