According to Genesis, God placed a rainbow in the cloud as the sign of the covenant after Noah’s Ark.
Genesis 9 describes a covenant between God, Noah, his descendants, and every living creature after the flood. The rainbow serves as a reminder that waters would not again become a flood to destroy all life. The passage presents the sign in the sky as part of a divine promise.
The rainbow covenant is distinct from the earlier events involving the dove and olive leaf. The dove belongs to the process of discovering that the waters had receded, while the rainbow belongs to the covenant made after Noah left the ark. These symbols are often combined in artwork, but Genesis gives them different narrative roles.
In scientific terms, a rainbow is produced when sunlight is refracted, internally reflected, and dispersed by water droplets. The biblical account uses the visible phenomenon as a covenant sign, not as a scientific explanation of its formation.