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THE RAINBOW PROMISE AND THE NEW WORLD

(c. 2348–2242 B.C.)

The century following the Flood was filled with extreme and rapid change.

More than seven months after the Ark ran aground on the mountains of Ararat,1 God told Noah to release the animals. Ample vegetation and an uninhabited new world waited.2 At last, the creatures followed each other out of the massive wooden vessel, one kind after another.3

The Bible does not say how steep the mountain was at the place where the Ark came to rest, but clearly even the less nimble land animals — such as the rhinoceros kind, the giraffe kind, elephants, and the various kinds of dinosaurs — were able to make their way down.

Once outside, Noah led his family in praise of God. He built an altar and sacrificed burnt offerings from each kind of the clean animals and birds, which God sent in groups of seven.

The Lord had unleashed His dreadful wrath on man’s sin through the worldwide Flood, but Scripture says that He was pleased with Noah’s offerings. God blessed Noah and his sons, and told them to be fruitful, increase in number, and fill the earth.4

God revealed that fear and dread of man would now come upon all the animals of land, sea, and air. Mankind was originally vegetarian but after the Flood, God gave permission to eat meat, as well.5 Perhaps the animals received this new fear of man to help evade his tendency to overkill and improperly manage the creatures, since man would now be raising and hunting them for food.

God also told Noah’s family that, because humans are made in God’s image, no one is to murder, lest he be punished by being killed himself.6 It was here, in Genesis 9, that God established the death penalty; “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.”7 This was nearly 850 years before God gave Moses the Ten Commandments.

Then the Creator promised that He would never again destroy all flesh with a flood. The beautiful rainbow in the clouds would be a sign of this promise.8 After all that they had experienced, the spectacular, multicolored arch was surely an amazing sight to Noah and his family, and a sweet assurance of God’s care for all people yet to be born.

In the decades after the Flood, lush forests grew around the world in temperate, well-watered environments.9 As Noah’s children explored the new lands, some features reminded them of pre-Flood terrain. Old-world names — such as Euphrates and Tigris for two of the rivers — were even used.

In the decades and first few centuries after the Flood, volcanoes continued to erupt, mountains continued to rise, and meteorites continued to blaze through the atmosphere and impact our planet’s surface, but with rapidly decreasing frequency.10 The combination of warm oceans and cool summers was the key to massive snow and ice buildup, starting at the North and South Poles.11 The rapid, post-Flood Ice Age was about to begin.

Earth’s transformation was immense, ongoing, and undoubtedly fearsome at times. We still feel residual affects today with ongoing volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and wild weather.

By the point when Noah’s grandsons were born, he had harvested a vineyard. All three of his sons probably lived nearby, since all were present on the day when Noah became intoxicated on too much of his wine and fell asleep unclothed in his tent. When Ham apparently ridiculed Noah to Shem and Japheth, Noah became so enraged that he spoke a curse upon Ham’s youngest son, Canaan.12

This damaged relationship between Noah and Ham may have played a part in the Babel rebellion that was soon to come.

PRIMARY PASSAGES

Genesis 8:18–9:28, 10:32, 11:1–9

KEY VERSE

“The rainbow shall be in the cloud, and I will look on it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.’ And God said to Noah, ‘This is the sign of the covenant which I have established between Me and all flesh that is on the earth.” Genesis 9:16–17

WRAP UP

“Thank You for rainbows, God! Thank You for the beautiful promise that You will never again judge sin by a worldwide flood. What an amazing sign You gave, and it reminds us that You used a colossal Ark to save Noah’s family and preserve mankind from the waters of the Flood. Thank You for eternal salvation, which can only come to us by Jesus, the true Savior!”

1 The Ark ran aground on day 150 of the Flood (also described in Genesis as the 17th day of the 7th month of Noah’s 600th year of life). Genesis 7, www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2010/08/23/overview-flood-timeline.

2 “A Dark and Stormy World,” by Larry Vardiman, PhD, in Answers magazine, October 2008, and online at http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v3/n4/dark-stormy-world, accessed February 2017.

3 Genesis 8:19. The animals “went out by families from the ark” (ESV).

4 Genesis 9:1

5 Genesis 9:2–4

6 Genesis 9:9–17

7 Genesis 9:6

8 Genesis 9:15–16

9 “. . . the world appears to have been a pretty balmy place until the Ice Age,” Dr. Andrew Snelling and Mike Matthews, Answers magazine, Volume 8 Number 2, 2013, page 47. https://answersingenesis.org/environmental-science/ice-age/when-was-the-ice-age-in-biblical-history/.

10 “Geologists have found over a hundred impact craters on earth. On [the table displayed in the article] 39 of the 110 impacts were deposited in the uppermost rock layers, and the rest were spread over the many lower layers. If all these layers were deposited slowly over millions of years, then impacts have been more common in recent times. But if most layers were deposited during the year-long Flood, 71 impacts occurred during only one year. The other 39 were spread over the next 4,500 years.” From “Did Meteors Trigger Noah’s Flood?” by Andrew Snelling, PhD, in Answers magazine online at www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v7/n1/meteors-trigger-flood, as accessed February 2017.

11 “For months, seawater covered the continents and then retreated from the land. These processes produced so much heat that the average ocean temperatures climbed to over 100oF (38oC), much warmer than today. This warm ocean set in motion a series of events that would lead to an Ice Age.” By professor of atmospheric science Dr. Larry Vardiman at https://answersingenesis.org/environmental-science/ice-age/what-started-the-ice-age/

12 Life had drastically changed. The event of Noah’s drunkenness was probably at least 10–20 years after the Flood — since his youngest son, Ham had already fathered Canaan (himself the youngest of four boys to Ham) and Canaan apparently had made his rebellious bent obvious. Noah and his sons seem to have lived near one another after their departure from the Ark. Furthermore, Noah’s response to his son Ham’s apparent ridicule/disrespect at Noah’s nakedness included the prophetic statement regarding Ham’s youngest son. Sometimes children suffer due to the sins of their parents; Exodus 20:5. See also https://answersingenesis.org/bible-characters/the-curse-of-canaan/.