Genesis Deeper ㉟ I Set My Rainbow in the Cloud · Who Is the Rainbow Meant For? (Genesis 9:8~17)
This series takes one Bible passage at a time and looks at it a little more closely. The images are free to use in worship, in class, and on social media.
God spoke to Noah and to his sons with him, saying, “As for me, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you: the birds, the livestock, and every animal of the earth with you, of all that go out of the ship, even every animal of the earth. I will establish my covenant with you: All flesh will not be cut off any more by the waters of the flood. There will never again be a flood to destroy the earth.” 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: I set my rainbow in the cloud, and it will be a sign of a covenant between me and the earth. When I bring a cloud over the earth, that the rainbow will be seen in the cloud, I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh, and the waters will no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. The rainbow will be in the cloud. I will look at it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” God said to Noah, “This is the token of the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”
Genesis 9:8~17 (World English Bible)
1. A Word That Appears Seven Times in Today’s Passage
The flood was over, and Noah’s family had come out of the ship (the ark). In the passage just before this one (9:1~7), God blessed Noah and his sons and told them to have many children and fill the earth. He also told them they could eat meat, but not with its blood. Those words included both ‘do this’ and ‘do not do that.’
Today’s passage follows right after those words. God speaks to Noah and his sons again. The word that appears most often here is ‘covenant.’ A covenant is a promise, and more exactly, a firm promise made between two parties. From verse 8 to verse 17, this word appears seven times in all (verses 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17). The Old Testament was first written in Hebrew, and in the Hebrew text the word for covenant also appears exactly seven times.
The promise itself is simple. God will never again destroy all living things with a flood (9:11). And God attaches one visible sign to this promise: the rainbow in the cloud. A visible sign is usually put there for someone to see. So a question comes up. Who did God set the rainbow there for?
2. The Promise Signs We Know
Think about how we make promises. Children hook their little fingers together. Two people getting married put rings on each other’s fingers. Promises usually come with a sign like this, something we can see. And that sign is there for us, the ones who have to keep the promise. Each time we look at the ring, we are meant to remember the promise and decide again to keep it.
So it is easy to read the rainbow the same way, as a sign given for people to look at. God shows people the rainbow, and every time people see it, they are supposed to remember God’s promise. Read this way, the rainbow becomes homework that people have to remember. It can feel as if the promise might fade if people forget.
But if we read the passage slowly, we find words that do not fit this reading. Here is verse 16.
“The rainbow will be in the cloud. I will look at it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth” (9:16).
The one who says he will look at the rainbow and remember the covenant is God. Nowhere in the passage does God tell people to look at the rainbow and remember.
3. Going Deeper · A Sign God Set There for Himself to See
Here is the answer first. In this covenant, not one task is handed to people. God is the one who establishes the covenant, sets the rainbow in the cloud, looks at it, and remembers the covenant. The rainbow is not homework for people to remember. It is a sign God set there for himself to look at, so that he himself would hold on to this promise.
Let’s go through the passage and see who does what. Every time the passage speaks of establishing or making the covenant, it is ‘I’ who does it (verses 9, 11, 12, 17). It is ‘I’ who sets the rainbow in the cloud (verse 13). It is ‘I’ who brings a cloud over the earth (verse 14), ‘I’ who remembers the covenant (verses 15, 16), and ‘I’ who looks at the rainbow (verse 16). This ‘I’ is God. On the other hand, not once in today’s passage does God tell Noah or his sons to do anything. The ‘do this’ and ‘do not do that’ from the passage just before are missing here.
Verse 14 is worth a closer look too. “When I bring a cloud over the earth, that the rainbow will be seen in the cloud, I will remember my covenant…” (9:14~15). The World English Bible says ‘will be seen,’ and the Hebrew is worded the same way. Notice that verse 14 only says the rainbow will be seen. It does not say who sees it. The first place that tells us who sees it is verse 16, and the one who sees it is God.
Genesis has one more sign that is worth comparing with the rainbow: circumcision in chapter 17. Circumcision was a ceremony in which a small piece of skin (the foreskin) was cut from a man’s body. It was a sign that marked the covenant with God on the body. The World English Bible calls the rainbow ‘the token of the covenant’ in 9:12 and 9:17 (a token is an old word for a sign), and ‘a sign of a covenant’ in 9:13. It calls circumcision ‘a token of the covenant’ in 17:11. In Hebrew, all of these are the same phrase, ot berit, which means ‘the sign of the covenant.’ In Genesis this phrase appears four times: three times in chapter 9 (verses 12, 13, 17) and once in chapter 17 (verse 11). Let’s read two verses from chapter 17.
“…As for you, you will keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations” (17:9)
“You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin. It will be a token of the covenant between me and you” (17:11)
The sign in chapter 17 is something people do to their own bodies. Abraham and the men of his household had to keep it, and if people did not do it, the sign did not exist. The sign in chapter 9 is different. God sets it in the sky, and God looks at it. Both are ‘the sign of the covenant,’ but one is a sign that people keep, and the other is a sign that God keeps.
So the rainbow is, above all, a sign God set there for himself to see. Of course people can see the rainbow too, and each time they see it, they can remember this promise. But this promise is not kept because people never forget it. It is kept because God looks at the rainbow and remembers.
4. Word Study · Berit · Qeshet · Zakar
Here are three Hebrew words from today’s passage.
① covenant · berit (בְּרִית). This means a firm promise made between two sides. In verses 9, 11, and 15, it appears as beriti (בְּרִיתִי), meaning ‘my covenant.’ The first place this word appears in Genesis is 6:18. Before the flood, God told Noah, “But I will establish my covenant with you…” The covenant he promised then is the covenant he now establishes here, after the flood.
② rainbow · qeshet (קֶשֶׁת). ‘My rainbow’ in verse 13 is qashti (קַשְׁתִּי) in Hebrew. But Hebrew has no separate word just for a rainbow. Qeshet basically means ‘bow,’ the kind used to shoot arrows. Outside chapter 9, this word appears in four places in Genesis, and each time it is a bow that people use. Here are the four. Hagar, who had left Abraham’s household, sits down ‘about a bow shot away’ from her child (21:16), that is, about as far as an arrow can fly. Isaac tells his son Esau to take his bow and go out hunting (27:3). Jacob speaks of a portion he took ‘with my sword and with my bow’ (48:22), and when he blesses his son Joseph, he speaks of Joseph’s bow (49:24). Because qeshet is the ordinary word for a bow, some people have long read this scene as God laying down his bow and hanging it in the clouds. The text does not explain it that way. But there is one thing the text says clearly. In the other four places in Genesis, the qeshet is always a bow that people use. Only in chapter 9 does God call the qeshet his own: ‘my rainbow.’ It is not something a person holds and uses. It belongs to God. And as the text says, God is the one who sets it in the cloud (verse 13), and God is the one who looks at it and remembers the covenant (verse 16).
③ remember · zakar (זָכַר). In verse 15, in the phrase ‘I will remember my covenant,’ the Hebrew for ‘I will remember’ is vezakharti (וְזָכַרְתִּי). It is the basic form zakar with ‘and I will’ added to it. In Hebrew, when God ‘remembers,’ it does not mean he suddenly recalls something he had forgotten. It means he acts on what he holds in his heart. In 8:1, God ‘remembered’ Noah and the animals in the ship, and right away he made a wind pass over the earth. In 9:15, too, ‘I will remember my covenant’ is followed in the same sentence by ‘the waters will no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.’ In chapter 8, God remembered Noah when the flood had already come. In chapter 9, God says ahead of time that every time a cloud covers the earth from now on, he will remember this covenant.
5. One More Thing · Birds and Livestock in the Covenant Too
It is also worth looking at who this covenant is made with. Verse 10 lists them like this.
“and with every living creature that is with you: the birds, the livestock, and every animal of the earth with you…” (9:10)
In this passage, ‘every living creature’ appears four times and ‘all flesh’ (every living body, people and animals alike) appears five times. In verse 13, God even calls the covenant ‘a covenant between me and the earth.’ The promise before the flood (6:18) was ‘with you,’ spoken to Noah alone. This covenant reaches Noah and his sons, their descendants, the birds, the livestock, the wild animals, and even the earth.
Birds and livestock cannot hear a promise and keep it. Even so, God names them as partners in the covenant. This shows that the covenant does not depend on how well the other side keeps it. As we saw above, from start to finish it is God who establishes this covenant and remembers it. That is why it can be a covenant ‘for perpetual generations’ (verse 12), meaning for every generation to come, and an ‘everlasting covenant’ (verse 16).
6. For Us Today
This passage leaves us with one message. The one who holds on to the rainbow covenant is not people but God.
The text does not say that Noah’s family vowed to keep this promise well. When the flood was over, Noah built an altar, a place for offering sacrifices to God. Then God said in his heart, “…the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth…” (8:21). In other words, what people plan in their hearts tends toward evil from a young age. God did not hand the job of making this promise hold to people like that. He took on even the job of looking at the rainbow and remembering.
In life, we often feel the weight of having to hold on to something. There are days when we are so worn out in body and mind that the whole day goes by without even a short prayer. There are days when we forget a commitment we made to God only a few days earlier. There are nights beside a family member who has been sick in bed for a long time, when we do not know what to believe. And there are weeks when everything goes wrong and we have no room even to think about God. At times like these, a thought can come: ‘I let go, so maybe things between God and me are over.’
Noah in today’s passage is not shown accomplishing anything. The text does not record a single word from Noah or his sons. They are simply there while God speaks to them. What they received was not a list of things to do, but a promise that God himself would keep.
Of course, this passage is not saying that we have nothing to do. In the passage just before this one, and in other places in the Bible, there are words people are meant to keep. But this rainbow covenant shows that before we hold on to anything, God is already holding on to this promise. Even birds and livestock, which cannot hear a promise or keep it, were included in this covenant. In the same way, we are not inside this promise because we have held on to it well. On the days we forget, God still remembers. God said ahead of time that every time a cloud covers the earth, he would remember this covenant. That may not change our situation right away, but it can be something to lean on when we have no strength left to hold on.
If something today makes you think, ‘I let things slip with God,’ you might write it down briefly in a notebook or in a note on your phone. Then, next to it, you could add one line: ‘Even when I forget, God remembers his promise.’ May you spend the rest of the day remembering that before we hold on, God is already remembering.
“God, you set your rainbow in the cloud and said you would look at it and remember your covenant. Help us know that even on days when we have no strength to hold on, you are already holding on to us. Help us rely on you, who do not forget even on the days we forget. Let those around us today who are worn out also find rest in this promise. Amen.”
🕊 How to Use This in Ministry
Opening question
Ask, “When you make a pinky promise with a friend, who has to keep that promise?” and listen to the children’s answers. Then say, “In today’s Bible passage, God makes a promise and sets a sign with it. Let’s find out together who says he will look at that sign and remember the promise,” and move into the passage.
Activity
Read Genesis 9:8~17 together in the World English Bible, and have the children fold down one finger each time they hear the word ‘covenant.’ When you finish and seven fingers are folded down, point out that today’s passage is a story about a promise. Next, read verse 16 again and ask, “Who says he will look at the rainbow and remember the covenant?” When the children find ‘God,’ write ‘establishes · sets · looks · remembers’ on the board or a large sheet of paper. Put ‘God’ in front of each word, and read them together. Finally, from today’s images, show the picture captioned ‘I set my rainbow in the cloud’ on a screen or as a printout, and ask, “What did God put this rainbow there to remember?”
Application
Give each child a small card and have them draw a rainbow. Under the rainbow, write together, “Even on the days I forget, God remembers his promise.” Before they put the card in their bag, have each child think of one time they felt bad about forgetting a promise, and then read the sentence on the card aloud together once.
🖼️ Today’s Four Images · Press and hold or right-click to save
I establish my covenant with you, and with your offspring after you |
The birds, the livestock, and every animal of the earth |
I set my rainbow in the cloud |
I will look at it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant |
📄 Image license CC0 (public domain) · Free to use, modify, and redistribute without attribution.
🤖 These images were created with AI (Grok).
📖 Genesis Deeper ㉚ God Remembered Noah · where we first looked at what it means when God ‘remembers’
Origin Bible · Mission Zedero
Contact joypej@gmail.com
✍️ This article was written with the help of AI and reviewed by a person.
The text is CC BY-NC 4.0. You are free to use it for noncommercial purposes with attribution.
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