12. RAINBOW SKIES

Based on GN 5-10…Read more there.

Over the years of all the tellings & re-tellings round camp fires & tents & more solid settlements by now, the story of the Ark becomes bigger & bigger. Like the Ark itself does! Like the fish that got away! Rather than Noah & his wife managing to take on board their extended family & save some livestock, the story expands to them taking on board representative animals & birds so that not only will Noah & his family be able to begin the human race over again, but other living creatures can do the same. The story goes that after the ark has been bobbing like a cork on the flood waters for 'forty days & forty nights' Noah sends a dove out from the raft to see if there is any dry land yet. The dove comes back without finding any. Later Noah sends the dove off again, & eventually it comes back with an olive leaf in its bill, which suggests to Noah that the flood waters must be receding. (That leaf has sometimes been used as a symbol of a new peace between humans & God.)  After a few more days, Noah sends the dove off again, but this time it doesn't come back, so Noah believes the waters are drying up & it has found somewhere to roost. Soon after, Noah & his ‘crew’ bring the Ark to dry land & begin life anew after the flood.

Other people must have managed to survive such a flood, too, wherever they could scramble to high ground. But they aren't important to the story, so they don't feature in it. The storytellers focus only on Noah & his family to make the point about living ‘rightly in God's eyes'. Although some people still like to believe the story happens literally as it's told, (& some even go looking for what's left of the Ark !) the real value of the flood story is as a parable, to put us in mind that not living as God wants us to live, as individuals & in community, can put us in danger. Thanks to the greater understanding Jesus later gives us of God as loving & compassionate rather than destructive & vengeful, it's OK for us to see things differently from those who first tell or hear them. 21st C. people don't have to live with pre-historic understandings of things! When the flood is over God makes a covenant, or agreement with Noah that all will be well with him and his family & all human beings who are faithful to Him from that time on. As the sign of this covenant YHWH sets a beautiful rainbow in the sky for all to see as a reminder. So, in ancient Hebrew society when someone sees a rainbow in the sky, & asks, What is that? some unknown but inspired storyteller recounts the tale of Noah & how the rainbow is the sign YHWH has placed in the heavens to assure us that never again will there be a flood so  widespread & destructive. Perhaps some of the threats inherent in climate changes taking place today are a more up-to-date reminder that God wants us to take care of each other & the world in which we live, but the Noah story's a pretty good one & leads us on to yet another. But that’s another story… Next time: Babel - Desert High Rise.

Question: Has the pot of gold gazumped the covenant in the rainbow watching stakes?