In Genesis, God placed a rainbow in the clouds as the sign of the covenant with Noah.
After the Flood, Genesis 9 describes a covenant between God, Noah, his descendants, and every living creature. The rainbow serves as a visible reminder that the waters will not again become a flood destroying all life on Earth.
The passage presents the rainbow as a divine covenant sign, not merely as a weather phenomenon. It connects the story’s ending with a promise concerning the future of the world and all creatures that survived the Flood.
The rainbow should not be confused with the dove carrying an olive leaf, which is an earlier sign in Genesis 8 that the floodwaters had receded. Both images are associated with the ark story, but they answer different questions.