What symbol did God set in the clouds as a covenant after the Flood?

After the Flood, God set a rainbow in the clouds as the sign of the covenant with Noah.

Genesis 9:12–17 describes the rainbow as the visible sign of God’s covenant with Noah, his descendants, and every living creature. The covenant promises that a Flood will not again destroy all life on earth. In the narrative, the rainbow appears after Noah leaves the ark, builds an altar, and receives God’s blessing.

The passage gives the rainbow a theological meaning within the biblical story: it serves as a reminder of the promise. It does not say that rainbows first came into existence at that moment. Rainbows are optical phenomena produced when light is refracted, reflected, and dispersed by water droplets, but Genesis uses the familiar natural phenomenon as a covenant sign.

A dove also appears in the Flood account, but it is connected with Noah’s search for land rather than the post-Flood covenant symbol. Those two images are often blended in popular retellings.