Genesis 9:17
And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.
Genesis stands as inspired and divine, and this word confirms Noah as a real man who lived and the Flood as a fact of history. The rainbow is declared to be the token of the covenant established with Noah and with all flesh and every living creature upon the earth. That covenant promises the earth will never again be destroyed by a flood, assuring all living beings that seedtime and harvest shall continue.
The bow reminds every generation that the Flood was judgment upon great wickedness. The covenant is gracious, a mercy to be gratefully remembered, and the rainbow is its sign of divine mercy and goodness and love and faithfulness and forbearance, given to strengthen confidence in God. The builders of Babel did not gratefully remember that mercy but murmured against God as arbitrary and severe, complaining of His expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden and His destruction of the world by the Flood.
When God says He will look upon the bow and remember the covenant, He speaks in human terms so people can understand, not as if He could forget. That covenant still holds back destruction, so the world is not swept away by a flood as in Noah's day even though sin has kept increasing since the transgression that shut Adam and Eve out of Paradise and even though God's law lies prostrate and His Sabbath is trampled underfoot by rebels. That sparing shows His love and care still flowing earthward in compassion and mercy and uncut-off benevolence. The covenant also shows Christ's care for the people of ancient times, who received life and grace through Him.
The bow in the cloud is the promise and symbol of God's unalterable covenant of mercy and forbearance and love toward all who believe in Him and trust in Jesus Christ as personal Saviour, a pledge of mercy to every repentant, believing soul. The same rainbow of promise encircles the throne on high, where it stands as an everlasting testimony that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. There it declares to the whole world that God will never forget His people in their struggle with evil. The days of Noah prefigure the present age before Christ appears in the clouds of heaven, for the character of that generation is characteristic of this age and human nature uninfluenced by the Spirit of God is the same then as now.