The Rainbow - Sign of God's Providential Care

A complete rainbow

The Rainbow -  A sign given by God

By chance, and totally unconnected with my last post, I was asked to preach on God's Rainbow Promise two weeks ago on the last Sunday before Advent. I was blessed by my preparatory researches on Genesis 8:20-9:17 and it seems I was able to pass this on to the congregation that listened to me. While I was struck again by how God can change his mind in response to a human being it was something else that caught my listeners' imagination.

It took me a week to realise this and has taken a further week to work out how to convey the PowerPoint presentation that caught the imagination into an internet-friendly version and make the time to do so.

No Hebrew Word for Rainbow

What caught the imagination was my discovery that there is no Hebrew word for rainbow in the Old Testament, only the word "bow", usually meaning a warrior's bow, such as the one God says, in Habakkuk 3:9,  he will use to defend his people. There is no word for rainbow as such; this is inferred from the context and in only four of the 72 uses in the Old Testament does it mean a rainbow - three here in Genesis and one in Ezekiel 1:28.

So when God says that he will put his bow in the sky he may be saying that he will hang up his warrior's bow, no longer to train it on the earth beneath to target and devastate it, destroying all life.  It is a change of plan at the same time as there is no change.  Because the bow, once loaded, then  points upwards to God himself, targeting for death the "Lamb slain before the foundation of the world" (Revelation 13:8) Jesus, who died on the cross so that we might have forgiveness of sins and be given his righteousness through faith in him.

Have a look at the short video in the link to see what I mean:

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