Proof 7 : Rainbows

Genesis 9:12-16 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”

For you to see a rainbow in the sky, you need rain and the sun behind you. The suns parallel rays pass through the raindrops and light is refracted back to you in the colours you see at an angle of 42° from the entry point of the ray into the droplet. The bow is caused by the way the light is refracted within the spherical nature of the raindrops. You only see half the circular shape because the Earth gets in the way of the other half.

If we have a scientific explanation, does that negate the biblical explanation for rainbows?

It would be logical to assume that rainbows have existed as long as the rain cycle. The assumption is that rainbows have always been there since the beginning of the world or at least since the oceans were formed and the sun appeared in the sky. If rainbows pre-date Noah's time, then God didn't create them especially for Noah and future generations as a sign.

Some Christians say that even though rainbows would have existed before the Flood, that God only used them as an illustrative reminder of his Covenant with Man that he would never again destroy the Earth with a flood. This would be similar to Jesus using the bread and the wine in the New Covenant to illustrate that his body was broken and blood poured out for the forgiveness of our sins. That is a valid explanation but that doesn't seem like the complete explanation to me.

There is another theory put forward that says rainbows didn't exist in the sky before The Flood, even though all the elements were there scientifically, that is rain and the suns light. The missing piece in the puzzle is the body of water that existed above the Earth prior to the Great Flood. This body of water is described in the Creation account in Genesis 1:6-7. The body of water would have scattered the suns rays entering the Earth's atmosphere, preventing rainbows in the sky. When the Flood occurred, this body of water was broken forever and from that point on the suns rays have entered the Earths atmosphere in parallel as required for a rainbow.

As we all know, rainbows don't just occur in the sky. You can see a rainbow looking at a waterfall as Noah may have done. The way the promise from God reads to me is that God took something that Noah had already seen, for example in a waterfall, and placed it in the sky for the first time - the rainbow that we see today! This would be a miraculous sign even to future generations of a wonderful promise from God.