This is how it’s going to be. #E100
I had thought the rainbow was about rain – that God wouldn’t end the earth that way.
Today, it seems more like a symbol of grace.
Once Noah is out of the Ark and makes a sacrifice to God, God reflects on the whole situation, resolving:
“Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood.”
He commits to mankind in the long term; revises the practicalities and ground rules and institutes a new covenant.
Seasons and natural order are promised. Man is permitted to eat meat as well as plants. Human life is set aside as sacred because Man is made in God’s image.
Then the rainbow is given as a sign of this covenant – that the world and its natural order will continue, despite Man’s fallen state. The covenant is between God and everything in creation – not just Man.
I think that this story illustrates the beginning of the tension that people feel about good and evil – and why evil is permitted, if God is good.
In this story we can see that if God’s wrath were to fall on the earth, onto all who were disobedient – all whose “every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood” it would warrant utter destruction of all things.
But within the order outlined in this covenant, through the cycle of the seasons, the valuing of human life and a sense of justice and worth, through the care and use of the world’s resources, there is an existence of grace extended to a fallen people.
And a rainbow.
I love the idea that God made a covenant with the Earth in its entirety, it would be nice if the climate deniers in my country would remember that.
If things continue the way they are going, surely there can be no doubt that the climate is in flux!?
I love your interpretation!
Thanks, Tilly.