The bow in the clouds in early reading

Says God says, “I have set My rainbow in the clouds” (Gen 9:13; קַשְׁתִּי, qashti, “My bow”, the ordinary word for a bow), as “a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth”. When it appears, “I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant” (9:16).

Pseudo-Jonathan sets the covenant “between My Word and between you”, with the bow “seen in the day (time), while the sun is not sunk (or hidden) in a cloud”. Josephus has God promise “a sign that I have left off my anger, by my bow”, adding that “the rainbow was the bow of God”. In Jubilees God sets “His bow in the cloud for a sign of the eternal covenant”, and the feast of weeks is kept “to renew the covenant every year” (6:15–17); Charles notes that the feast is tied to Noah’s covenant “here only”. Calvin calls it “frivolous” to deny “any rainbow before the deluge”: the arch “which had before existed naturally” is “consecrated into a sign and pledge”, and God “speaks after the manner of men” in saying He will remember. Keil holds that the bow’s establishment as a covenant sign “presupposes that it appeared then for the first time”, and quotes Delitzsch: “it proclaims peace between God and man”. These are their views.

Uncertain Whether the bow first appeared after the flood or was an existing phenomenon given new meaning is open. No lean is taken, and these readings do not fix the meaning of 9:12–17.