The Rainbow
Genesis 9:1-2, 8-19
The New Beginning
9 1 God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Have many children. Fill the earth with your people. 2 Every animal on earth, every bird in the air, every animal that crawls on the ground, and every fish in the sea will be afraid of you. All of them will be under your control.
8 Then God said to Noah and his sons, 9 “I now make my promise to you and to your people who will live after you. 10 I make my promise to all the birds, and to all the cattle, and to all the animals that came out of the boat with you. I make my promise to every living thing on earth. 11 This is my promise to you: All life on the earth was destroyed by the flood. But that will never happen again. A flood will never again destroy all life on the earth.”
12 And God said, “I will give you something to prove that I made this promise to you. It will continue forever to show that I have made an agreement with you and every living thing on earth. 13 I am putting a rainbow in the clouds as proof of the agreement between me and the earth. 14 When I bring clouds over the earth, you will see the rainbow in the clouds. 15 When I see this rainbow, I will remember the agreement between me and you and every living thing on the earth. This agreement says that a flood will never again destroy all life on the earth. 16 When I look and see the rainbow in the clouds, I will remember the agreement that continues forever. I will remember the agreement between me and every living thing on the earth.”
17 So God said to Noah, “This rainbow is proof of the agreement that I made with all living things on earth.”
18 Noah’s sons came out of the boat with him. Their names were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) 19 These three men were Noah’s sons. And all the people on earth came from these three sons.