The Bow in the Cloud

God blessed Noah and his sons.

"Be fruitful," He said, "and multiply, and fill the earth."

It was the third time those words had been spoken over the world: once over the fish on the fifth day, once over the man and the woman on the sixth, and now over eight tired people standing on a mountainside beside a great black box, in a world that had been washed clean and was waiting to be filled again.

But it was not quite the same world, and God told them so.

"From now on," He said, "every beast of the earth, and every bird of the air, and every fish of the sea will be afraid of you. The fear and the dread of you will fall on them all. They are given into your hands."

"Everything that lives and moves will be food for you," said God. "As I gave you the green plants, now I give you everything. But you must never eat flesh with its life still in it: its blood. The life is in the blood."

In the first world, God had given no one leave to eat meat. Now, for the first time, He gave it. But the life itself was not theirs. It still belonged to the One who gave it. And Noah and his sons swore, there on the mountain, that they would never eat any blood, all the days of their lives, nor their children after them.

"And for your own lifeblood," God went on, "I will demand an accounting, from every beast and from every man. If a man sheds his brother's blood, I will come looking for it.

"Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. For in His own image God made man."

He had come looking once before, a very long time ago, in a field. Where is your brother Abel?

That was the reason, then, and it is a larger reason than it sounds. Not because a man is useful, or because killing is bad for the tribe, but because every man carries the image of God. To strike at a man is to lift your hand against the face of God Himself. The flood had washed away a great deal. It had not washed that away. Every one of Noah's children, and their children's children forever, would still carry the likeness of the One who made them, however much they spoiled it.

Then God said: "Now I am making My covenant with you: with you, and with your children after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds and the cattle and every beast of the earth, every living thing that came out of the ark.

"Never again will all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood. Never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth."

"And this is the sign of the covenant I am making," said God, "between Me and you and every living creature with you, for all the generations to come.

"I have set My bow in the cloud."

"Whenever I bring clouds over the earth," said God, "and the bow is seen in the cloud, I will remember My covenant between Me and you and every living creature. The waters will never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. The bow will be in the cloud, and I will look at it, and remember."

I will look at it. Don't miss that. We tend to think of the rainbow as a sign for us, to remind us of what God promised. But that is not what God said. He said that He would look at it, and He would remember. It is God's own reminder to Himself.

Noah had asked how anyone could live under a sky that might open again. This was the answer, and it was in the clouds themselves.

So whenever the clouds come over and the rain begins to fall, and someone out in a field looks up at the dark sky with a little cold touch of the old fear, God is looking at the same sky. He is looking at His bow, hung up in the cloud with no arrow on the string, and remembering what He said.

Noah would look up. And God would be looking too.