Genesis 9:8-17

6. The Rainbow Covenant (Genesis 9:8-17).

8 And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying, 9 And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you; 10 and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you; of all that go out of the ark, even every beast of the earth. 11 And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of the flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth, 12 And God said, this is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations; 13 I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth, 14 And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud, 15 and I will remember my covenant which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh, 16 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. 17 And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.

(1) Note the word covenant. It designates, not a compact, not a contract, not even an agreement, but. a dispensation of Divine grace to be appropriated by human faith. The God of the Bible is a covenant God. God overtures and states the conditions: man accepts the conditions and thus enters into covenant relationship with God.

(2) The Pre-Diluvian Covenant (Genesis 6:18-22). In Genesis 9:18 here we have the first occurrence of the word berith, translated covenant, in the Scriptures. God informs Noah that He will establish His covenant with him. It is a sovereign dispensing of grace on God's part, and the security arises from the action of God. It is God's covenant, and He establishes it. Flowing from this dispensation to Noah there are corresponding obligations. Noah and his family were to come into the ark and he was to bring with him the specified number of animals and birds and creeping things. Thus there is no conflict between sovereign administration of grace and ensuing obligations (NBD, 264).

(3) The Post-Diluvian Covenant (Genesis 9:8-17). (a) This covenant is unconditional, that is, unilateral: no conditions are specified as terms on which the Divine grace bestowed is made contingent. (b) It is conceived and established by God Himself. There is no human contribution to the agency by which the promises are fulfilled. The sign does not even take the form of an ordinance to be performed by man at the divine behest. The bow in the cloud is for the purpose of attesting the faithfulness of God and, in anthropomorphic terms, is to bring to God's remembrance His covenant promise. It is not a sign over which men exercise any control. (c) It is universal in its scope. It embraces not only Noah but also his seed after him and every living creature. It is a covenant between God and all flesh. (d) It is everlasting. No uncertainty or mutability can belong to God's unconditional promise. (e) The bow in the cloud is the sign of the covenant. (f) The essence of the covenant is that the earth shall never again be devastated by a Flood (cf. Genesis 8:21-22).

(4) The Bow in the Cloud: the token or sign of the covenant, that is to say, of the Divine promise. (a) Was this the first appearance of the rainbow? We think not. Experience informs us that a rainbow has always been formed when sunshine and rainfall occur in the relationship determined by the Lawgiver of the physical (astronomical) world. But, some will say, there was no rainfall before the Flood: they base their view on the words of Genesis 2:5-6. However, in these two verses we have (as explained in my Genesis, Vol. I, pp. 426-427) an account of the conditions that prevailed on the third day of the Creation, following the creation of energy-matter and light (on Day 1), and the atmosphere (on Day 2), and the lands and seas (on Day 3), prior to the first appearance of plant life (on the same Day), All these physical phenomenalight, atmosphere, lands, seasnecessarily preceded the return of the vaporous substances (mists) to the earth in the form of rainfall. There is no reason for assuming that rainfall did not continue to occur from that point on, even to the age of the Flood when the windows of heaven were thrown wide open to let torrential rains through upon the wicked antediluvian peoples. (b) Note Genesis 9:13I do set my bow in the cloud. White-law (PCG, 143): Literally, I have given, or placed. Rotherham (EB, 40): My bow have I set in the cloud. By way of comparison, when Jesus established the Communion service, He did not then make the bread or the fruit of the vine (Matthew 26:26-29, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26): He merely selected these two substances which had existed from time immemorial and appointed them to be the emblems of His crucified sinless body and his shed blood as long as the Church should exist on this earth, that is, to the time of His Second Coming. So it was with the rainbow in Noah's time: as if God said to the patriarch, I have placed my bow in the cloud. I now appoint it to be a sign of the my covenant promise that I will never again bring a flood upon the earth to destroy mankind. Every time you and your posterity see this rainbow in the heavens you will remember my promise, and I will remember this, my everlasting covenant, which is between me and you and all living creatures. Thus we rightly designate the Rainbow Covenant the Covenant of Hope. (JB, 25n.): The covenant with Noah, the rainbow its emblem, involves the whole creation: Abraham's covenant, whose sign is to be circumcision, embraces his descendants only, Genesis 17; under Moses the Covenant is confined to Israel, and brings with it an obligation: fidelity to the Law, Exodus 19:5; Exodus 24:7-8, and to the sabbath observance in particular, Exodus 31:16-17. The seal of the New (spiritual) Covenant is the Holy Spirit (2 Corinthians 1:21-22; Ephesians 1:10; Ephesians 4:30).

REVIEW QUESTIONS

See Genesis 9:28-29.