After Noah’s flood, God placed a rainbow in the clouds as the sign of a covenant with Earth.
Genesis 9:12–16 describes the rainbow as the visible sign of the covenant made with Noah, his descendants, and every living creature. The covenant promises that a flood will not again destroy all life on Earth. The rainbow therefore functions in the story as a reminder of the promise, not merely as a weather detail.
The passage places the sign after Noah leaves the ark and offers a sacrifice. It broadens the covenant beyond Noah’s immediate family by explicitly including living creatures. That universal scope is one reason the rainbow became a powerful symbol in religious art and later cultural traditions.
The story does not claim that rainbows first appeared only after the flood. Instead, it assigns the rainbow a covenant meaning within the narrative. This distinction helps separate the text’s theological symbolism from later interpretations of the natural phenomenon.