Note 16 — Chapter V

It is a question which has been frequently started—Whether there was any rainbow before the flood? Some have conceived that the rainbow was something of a miraculous production, and that it was never seen before the flood. The equivocal sense of the word ‘set’ in our translation, has occasioned a mistaken impression of this kind. The Hebrew word thus translated, signifies more properly ‘I do give,’ or ‘I appoint.’ The whole passage in reference to this circumstance, literally translated, runs thus;—“I appoint my bow which is in the cloud, that it may be for a sign or token of a covenant between me and the earth; and it shall come to pass when I bring a cloud over the earth, and the bow shall be seen in the cloud, that I will remember my covenant that is between me and you,” &c. As the rainbow is produced by the immutable laws of refraction and reflection, as applied to the rays of the sun striking on drops of falling rain, the phenomenon must have been occasionally exhibited from the beginning of the world: unless we suppose that there was no rain before the flood, and that the constitution of things in the physical system was very different from what it is now. The passage affirms no more than that the rainbow was then appointed to be a symbol of the covenant between God and man, and although it may have been frequently seen before, it would serve the purpose of a sign equally well, as if it had been miraculously formed for this purpose, and even better, as its frequent appearance, according to natural laws, is a perpetual memorial to man of the divine faithfulness and mercy.