Again, God said to Noah and his sons:

I am going to make a solemn promise to you and to everyone who will live after you. This includes the birds and the animals that came out of the boat. I promise every living creature that the earth and those living on it will never again be destroyed by a flood.

The rainbow that I have put in the sky will be my sign to you and to every living creature on earth. It will remind you that I will keep this promise forever. When I send clouds over the earth, and a rainbow appears in the sky, I will remember my promise to you and to all other living creatures. Never again will I let floodwaters destroy all life. When I see the rainbow in the sky, I will always remember the promise that I have made to every living creature.” (Genesis 9:8-16)

The need for punishment is long past. On the surface, the story of the post-flood rainbow resembles stories like, “how did the bear lose its tail?” But the story of Noah and the ark was not devised simply to explain where rainbows come from. In fact, rainbows predated the flood, just as circumcision predated Abraham. God simply imbued both the rainbow, and later circumcision, with a new significance: they became signs, or symbols of a contract. They were the equivalent of what we would see later when the patriarchs such as Jacob would set up a stone or a pile of stones to serve as a kind of marker for an agreement, promise, or significant incident. The rainbow served as an everlasting reminder to the human race and to every other creature living on Earth, that God would never again allow all life to be destroyed by a great flood. It also served as a reminder to God. It was an everlasting promise, one that he would always keep and never break, despite the sad reality that human behavior had not changed at all. Soon Noah would be getting drunk. Since Noah, other bad behavior has followed: wars and rumors of wars, murder and violence of every kind.

The reasons for the flood have not gone away; but God will never again punish us like that. Perhaps, therefore, the flood and the rainbow stand as symbols of something else: that Jesus died once for our sins and he never has to do that again. Jesus suffered once for all the punishment we have ever, or will ever, deserve.

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