God’s Clouds – (1.) Noah and the Rainbow
God’s Clouds – (1.) Noah and the Rainbow.
“God thunders marvelously with His voice; He works wonders that we cannot understand.
He commands the snow, ‘Fall to the ground!’ And the downpour of rain, His mighty downpour of rain…
He loads the clouds with moisture and scatters His lightning-clouds…
Listen to this, O Job, and pay attention! Stand still and ponder the wondrous works of God;
Do you have any idea how God controls the storms, and causes the lightning to flash from His clouds?
Do you understand how the clouds are balanced in the sky, floating in the air, which are miraculous works of Him who is perfect in wisdom and skill? (Job 37:5-6, 11, 14-16).
Clouds truly are wondrous, and miraculous, and one of our Creator’s greatest inventions. Each cloud we see in the sky is unrepeatable, completely unique and always changing. They can be dark and foreboding, or light and joyous. They can pour down upon us light rain or heavy rain, a blizzard of snow or postcard snowflakes, driving hail or frozen ice. They can strike the earth with dramatic lightning or be a sun-drenched fluffball. Clouds can be practically luminous and filled with sunlight or monstrously dark without any light at all. It’s no wonder clouds have captured the imagination of poets, artists, pretty much all of mankind since the beginning, for they are just hanging there in the sky between heaven and earth, somehow floating and perfectly balanced in midair, above the earth yet still near us as well. Hopefully the science of clouds we now know will not remove the unpredictable mystery and glorious wonder of clouds. As author John Ruskin put it, “You may take any single fragment of any cloud in the sky, and you will find it put together as if there had been a year’s thought over the plan of it – a picture in itself. You may try every other piece of cloud in the heavens, and you will find them everyone as perfect, and yet not one in the least like another.” (The True and the Beautiful, 1858).
Clouds as Theophanies. From the Greek words “Theo” (God) and “phaino” (to appear), a theophany is when God announces Himself in a visible form, and He makes a temporary appearance on earth for reasons of His own. A theophany is God’s temporary visible manifestation to remind us of His permanent presence in the world. A theophany is when God stoops to us in gracious self-revelation in a form that we can experience through our senses. Theophanies, though, are preliminary, because they anticipate the ultimate theophany in the incarnation of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. Theophanies in the Hebrew Bible were God’s temporary appearances, but in Jesus we see the fulfillment of theophany, a permanent appearance of God on earth.
Noah’s Sacrifice. Once everyone left the ark, Noah built an altar to Yahweh. On the altar Noah sacrificed burnt offerings to the Lord, sacrificing some of those clean animals rescued for that purpose as directed by God before the flood (Gen. 7:2-3). Yahweh loved the sweet aroma of the thanksgiving sacrifice (8:21), and made an astounding promise to Noah, and all his descendants, and thus to the world at large. This is the first time clouds are mentioned in Scripture since the creation of the world.
“This is the sign that I set for the covenant between Me and you, and every living creature with you, for all ages to come. I have set My rainbow in the clouds, and it shall serve as a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth, and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember My covenant between Me and you and every living creature among all flesh, so that the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the rainbow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures, all flesh that is on earth.” (Genesis 9:12-16, Tanakh).
Noah seemed to be flourishing in his relationship with God while all around him humanity had descended to the worst of human behavior. The entire world was depraved, violent, cruel, and even the imaginations of the people were evil. We’re not sure how Noah managed to be blameless in a wicked generation, but he did. The Amplified Bible put it that Noah “walked in habitual fellowship with God.” (Genesis 6:9). He found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Peter stated that Noah was a “preacher of righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5), that he “warned the world of God’s righteous judgment.” (NLT). When literally everyone else was going in one direction, Noah was going in the opposite direction. He was going upstream in a downstream world. It wasn’t long before Noah found himself floating happily on that stream.
Noah’s main claim to fame was his unquestioning obedience to the Lord’s instructions to build a huge boat on dry land, distant from all water, with not a cloud in sight. Noah was miles away from any navigable water, and yet he complied with everything God asked of him. “During the whole sequence of events, Noah is not reported as saying a single word. Instead we read, four times, of his silent obedience.” (Rabbi Sacks, in his commentary on Genesis). There is no doubt Noah was ridiculed and laughed at. Certainly many if not most questioned his sanity while he worked at building this boat with his three sons. Why are you building this monstrosity, people would jeer? It sure is a funny-looking house! But Noah kept plugging away on this long-term project that was assigned by God. Scholars claim that it took Noah and his family 120 years to build the ark. That was the length of the grace period that God mentioned in Genesis 6:3. Peter confirmed that in 1 Peter 3:20, “God waited patiently while Noah was building his boat.” God wanted to give the people plenty of time to repent, to turn their lives around from their wicked ways. Noah preached righteousness, but we aren’t sure if it was in words or deeds. His life during those construction years would have been a powerful example for sure. Maybe he was letting his obedience do the talking. Maybe he didn’t need to say much. Noah’s life was prophetic, if not his words. But Noah was definitely a “letter of the law” type of believer. He obeyed the rules, didn’t question anything, and that was that.
Interestingly, Peter called Noah a “preacher of righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5), which implies that he must have tried to warn the sinful population that they were doomed unless they turned their lives around. Maybe he did his preaching through his obvious obedience, we don’t know. Yes, Noah was a “righteous” man, but he never seemed to be effective beyond whatever simple instructions were given by God. He never had the courage to question God about the Flood, or challenge God’s actions in any way. Once he heard that the whole human race was going to be wiped out, why didn’t Noah do what Abraham did: bargain with God for just a few of those lives? Why didn’t Noah respond to God like Moses and advocate for those were going to lose their lives to God’s anger? Also, Noah’s blameless character didn’t seem to make his goodness attractive. He didn’t make his righteousness stick to those around him. Noah didn’t have any influence. Noah may have had personal character, but it didn’t affect anyone else. Noah simply wasn’t a very effective leader when the world desperately needed one. That’s why I think Noah is an odd person to be a hero of the faith. He didn’t let his little light shine. Noah was righteous and faithful to the letter, but he did not demonstrate the magnanimous heart of God. As Rabbi Sacks commented in his commentary, “Though Noah was a righteous man, he was not a hero. Noah does not save humanity. He saves only himself, his family, and the animals he takes with him in the ark. He does as he is commanded. But obedience is not enough. In Judaism, God does not demand blind obedience. If God sought no more than mindless submission to the divine will, He would have created robots and machines. God wants us to be mature, deliberative, to do His will because we understand or because we trust Him when we do not understand.”
Through rabbinic tradition, this promise with Noah evolved into a universal set of moral laws known as the Noahide Covenant, or the Laws of Noah. These seven laws were produced later in history, in the spirit of God’s intentions and God’s words in Genesis. The Noahide covenant is an official rabbinic follow-up to God’s promises to Noah, his descendants, and all living creatures. The seven Laws of Noah are:
(1.) No idolatry.
(2.) No cursing God’s name or taking it in vain.
(3.) No murder. “Whoever sheds human blood will his own blood be shed.” (9:6).
(4.) No adultery or fornication.
(5.) No stealing or theft.
(6.) No eating of flesh from a living animal or ingesting its blood.
(7.) Establish courts of justice.
These seven laws of the Noahide Covenant were to apply to all humanity. They were universal laws to all people. Jewish tradition claims that “the life to come” is promised only to those “righteous Gentiles” that follow this Noahide Covenant. Rabbinic tradition claims that these seven laws of Noah were first given to Adam in the Garden, but it went unrecorded. These laws were finally made official later in history under the terms of the Noahide Covenant. The official blessing said by Yahweh over Noah also duplicated His words to Adam and Eve, “Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth.” (9:1).