Genesis 9:12-15

‘THE BOW IN THE CLOUD’

‘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,’ etc.

Genesis 9:12

I. Among the many deep truths which the early Chapter s of Genesis enforce, there is none which strikes the thoughtful inquirer more forcibly than the connection between the disorder occasioned by man’s sin and the remedy ordained by the wisdom and mercy of God. This connection may be traced in a very remarkable manner in the appointment of the rainbow as a sign and pledge of the covenant.

II. Not only is the rainbow, as an offspring equally of storm and sunshine, a fitting emblem of the covenant of grace; it is also a type of the equally distinctive peculiarity of Christ’s Gospel—that sorrow and suffering have their appointed sphere of exercise, both generally in the providential administration of the world and individually in the growth and development of personal holiness.

III. For the full comprehension of the bow we must turn to the New Testament.—In the Person and work of the atoning Mediator we find the only solution of that marvellous combination of judgment and mercy which is the distinctive characteristic of the whole of the Divine economy.

IV. There is a necessary imperfection in all earthly types of heavenly things.—In nature the continued appearance of the rainbow is dependent on the continued existence of the cloud. In heaven the rainbow will continue to point backward to man’s fall, onward to the perpetuity of a covenant which is ordered in all things and sure. But the work of judgment will then be accomplished, and therefore the cloud will have no more place in heaven.

Canon E. B. Elliott.