After the great Flood, the Torah tells us, God established a brit olam—an eternal covenant—with Noah and all living creatures, promising never again to destroy the earth the way that He had. As the symbol of this covenant, God chose the rainbow:
“I have set My bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth.” (Genesis 9:13).
But of all possible signs, why did God choose the rainbow?
One explanation lies in the rainbow’s extraordinary beauty and its appearance in the sky after a storm. It appears suddenly, often in the quiet that follows the storm—when the sky still broods with clouds, yet sunlight breaks through. Against that dark backdrop, a perfect arc of color emerges: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet—each distinct, yet seamlessly blending into the next. The rainbow’s beauty is not only in its colors but in its contrast: light piercing through rain, serenity following chaos, renewal after destruction. It’s as though creation itself exhales, whispering that even after the fiercest storms, beauty can be born from brokenness.
After the cataclysmic flood that nearly erased life from the earth, what symbol could better express hope, renewal, and the divine promise never again to wipe out humanity through a flood than the rainbow that appears in the sky after a storm?
A deeper layer of meaning, however, emerges when we turn to the Hebrew word itself. In English, we speak of a “rainbow,” but in Hebrew it is simply called a keshet—a “bow”. In the Bible, a keshet almost always refers to an instrument of war or hunting:
“Take your quiver and your bow,” Isaac tells Esau (Genesis 27:3).
“With my sword and my bow,” says Jacob, recalling his struggle for survival (Genesis 48:22).
And the Psalmist laments, “The wicked bend their bow to shoot from the shadows at the upright” (Psalms 11:2).
If the word keshet means, simply, “bow,” how do we know that the Torah, in this context, refers to a “rainbow”? Because God says that He is setting His “bow in the clouds”.
As I explain in my book In the Beginnings: Discovering the Two Worldviews Hidden within Genesis 1–11 (available on Amazon at bit.ly/In-the-Beginnings), the symbolism, then, is profound. God takes what is typically associated with death and destruction and transforms it into a symbol of harmony and reconciliation. Furthermore, the fact that the bow turns upward, away from the earth, suggests that after the devastation that God wreaked upon humanity in the flood, the bow is now being reversed and serves as a symbol of peace. It is as if God Himself has laid down His weapon, declaring the dawn of a new relationship with humanity.
As God seeks peace in His relationship with humanity, so too we are called upon to seek peace in our relationship with one another. While our enemies may glorify and sanctify war, we idealize and sanctify peace. We fight when we must, and we just fought one of the most justified wars in our long history—but our ultimate aspiration is always shalom—peace.
It is, therefore, no coincidence that so many of our prayers and blessings culminate with the word shalom. The priestly blessing ends with it. The Kaddish, recited in memory of the dead, concludes with a plea for peace. Each week we greet one another with “Shabbat Shalom.” Even the name of our capital, Yerushalayim, bears within it the root shalom. And one of God’s very names, the Sages tell us, is “Shalom” (see Judges 6:24).
May the return of the hostages and the end of the war begin a new era of peace so that we can live to witness the fulfillment of the prophet Isaiah’s vision, “And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not take up sword against nation, nor shall they learn war anymore” (Isaiah 2:4).
Shabbat Shalom.
