Recapturing the Rainbow

 The waters of the flood had finally receded, and just eight people remained alive. As Noah and his family stepped off the ark into this new world, there remained virtually no trace of the old. The old world they had known was now buried deep in the ground.

And mercifully so, for mankind had grown so corrupt that “every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5). So God put the wicked out of their own misery and began life anew with the family of one righteous man, Noah.

In this new world, God made a covenant with Noah and his three sons, and He said,

9 “And as for Me, behold, I establish My covenant with you and with your descendants after you,

10 “and with every living creature that is with you: the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you, of all that go out of the ark, every beast of the earth.

11 “Thus I establish My covenant with you: Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood; never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

12 And God said: “This is the sign of the covenant which I make between Me and you, and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations:

13 “I set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between Me and the earth.

14 “It shall be, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the rainbow shall be seen in the cloud;

15 “and I will remember My covenant which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.

16 “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.”

17 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.” (Gen. 9:9-17.)

Every time it rains and we look up into the sky and see a rainbow, we see a reminder of God’s covenant with man and beast. But as is often the case, it seems that the earthly sign is patterned after a heavenly one.

The prophet Ezekiel saw a vision of Almighty God and recorded that a rainbow shone around Him: “Like the appearance of a rainbow in a cloud on a rainy day, so was the appearance of the brightness all around it. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD” (Ezek. 1:28).

The apostle John, too, saw a rainbow around the throne of the Almighty: “And He who sat there was like a jasper and a sardius stone in appearance; and there was a rainbow around the throne, in appearance like an emerald” (Rev. 4:3). Later, he also saw an angel bearing the same sign: “I saw still another mighty angel coming down from heaven, clothed with a cloud. And a rainbow was on his head, his face was like the sun, and his feet like pillars of fire” (Rev. 10:1).

The rainbow that God created has seven colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. (If you’re like me and think of colors mostly by simple terms such as blue or green, indigo is blue violet.) The colors and their order can be remembered by the following name or acronym: Roy G. Biv.

Now, unless you’ve been isolated for the last many decades, you’ve also seen that sodomites and cross-dressers, who take pride in their wickedness, have adopted a form of the rainbow as a symbol of their pride. Just as they misuse their own bodies, they also misuse the symbol that God gave to the whole earth.

So let’s take a look at the rainbow that God created, the true one and not the counterfeit. Why did God use the rainbow as a sign of His covenant? And why is there a rainbow around His throne?

Basics of the Rainbow

To begin with, a rainbow appears through the interaction of water and light. As light passes through water droplets in the air, the light waves bend and disperse according to wavelength. Thus the colors appear in order of wavelength, from longest (red) to shortest (violet). And on either side of this visible spectrum are other light waves invisible to the human eye: infrared and ultraviolet.

In Scripture, light often represents truth: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psa. 119:105). It represents God’s way. Yeshua/Jesus said, “For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God” (John 3:20-21).

And, of course, light also represents Jesus Christ, who is, together with His Father, the source of truth. Again, Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life” (John 8:12).

Water often pictures the Holy Spirit: “For I will pour water on him who is thirsty, and floods on the dry ground; I will pour My Spirit on your descendants, and My blessing on your offspring” (Isa. 44:3). And, as we all know, it’s through the baptism of water that one can receive the Holy Spirit: “Jesus answered, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God’” (John 3:5).

So why seven (visible) colors? 

The number 7 portrays a few different things in Scripture. It represents completeness, for God completed His creation in seven days: “Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done” (Gen. 2:1-2).

Seven also represents sanctification. Under the Old Covenant, anyone who touched a corpse would be unclean for seven days, after which he would be clean. To the army of Israel, God said, “And as for you, remain outside the camp seven days; whoever has killed any person, and whoever has touched any slain, purify yourselves and your captives on the third day and on the seventh day. And you shall wash your clothes on the seventh day and be clean, and afterward you may come into the camp” (Num. 31:19, 24).

But most significantly for our purposes, seven represents a covenant. In Gen. 21:27-32, we discover,

27 So Abraham took sheep and oxen and gave them to Abimelech, and the two of them made a covenant.

28 And Abraham set seven ewe lambs of the flock by themselves.

29 Then Abimelech asked Abraham, “What is the meaning of these seven ewe lambs which you have set by themselves?”

30 And he said, “You will take these seven ewe lambs from my hand, that they may be my witness that I have dug this well.”

31 Therefore he called that place Beersheba, because the two of them swore an oath there.

32 Thus they made a covenant at Beersheba.

In Hebrew, Beersheba (Strong’s # H884) means “well of seven” or “well of an oath.” The root word transliterated as “sheba” is the Hebrew word shava (Strong’s # H7650), which, according to Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Lexicon, means to “swear, seven oneself, bind oneself by seven things.”

It’s no wonder, then, that the seventh day Sabbath is also a sign of God’s covenant: “Surely My Sabbaths you shall keep, for it is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the LORD who sanctifies you” (Ex. 31:13).

Finally, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which lasts seven days (Lev. 23:6), begins with the Passover sacrifice. The death of the Passover lambs under the Old Covenant foreshadowed Jesus’ death as our Passover Lamb (1 Cor. 5:7). And what happened at Jesus’ death? “He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death” (Heb. 9:15). So Christ’s death on Nisan 14, “the Preparation Day of the Passover” (John 19:14), ushered in both the New Covenant and the seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread.

Thus, the seven colors of the rainbow form seven witnesses of God’s covenant with all flesh. God sevened Himself, He swore by seven things. And the rainbow is only visible because of the interaction of light and water. The Holy Spirit (water) enables us to understand God’s truth (light) and enter into the New Covenant with our Savior, the living Word!

All these things seem pretty well established. Let’s dig a little deeper and see what else we can find. What do the individual colors represent?

The Colors

The first thing we need to know about the colors is that there are three primary colors of light: red, green, and blue. All others are mixtures of these. Orange and yellow are mixtures of red and green; indigo is a mixture of red, green, and blue; and violet is a mixture of red and blue.

An equal blend of red, green, and blue light produces white light. And, in turn, white light produces all seven colors when refracted through a prism or a raindrop.

In Scripture, white symbolizes righteousness or purity. “He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments” (Rev. 3:5). “And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints” (Rev. 19:8).

So refracting white light produces the seven colors of the rainbow, and combining those seven colors once again produces white light. God’s goal for each of us is to purify and cleanse us, to welcome us into His family, and to clothe us with the white robes of His righteousness. That’s God’s plan, and the rainbow illustrates it.

What else illustrates God’s plan? Why, the seven annual Holy Days! It becomes apparent, then, there must be a correlation between the seven Holy Days and the seven colors of the rainbow.

Now, some of us interpret the Holy Days a little differently than others do. What follows, of course, represents my own view, which I’ve previously presented in a series of blog posts about the tabernacle.

Red

Red, the first color of the rainbow, corresponds to Passover. Blood is red, and Yeshua/Jesus spilled His blood for us at Passover.

But this isn’t all. God formed the first man, Adam, out of the dust of the earth (Gen. 2:7), and his name means “red” (Strong’s # H120). Yeshua shed His blood for the people of the earth, the descendants of Adam.

Red also represents sin, in which state mankind naturally resides. “‘Come now, and let us reason together,’ says the LORD, ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool’” (Isa. 1:18). What cleanses us of our sins? The shed blood of our Messiah!

So in the color red, we can see a symbol of Passover. Jesus Christ’s shed blood (red) covers us descendants of Adam (red) and cleanses us of our sins (red).

Orange

Orange light is mostly red, but also mixed with substantial green light. Thus we can expect it to have certain properties in common with red. Like red, it’s associated with the earth and with sin, but also with purification.

“Orange” isn’t mentioned by name in most Bible translations, so we have to look at items we know to be orange, such as copper, bronze, and fire.

In the tabernacle, God commanded that both the altar of burnt offering and the bronze laver be made of bronze (Ex. 27:1-6; 30:18). As we’ve seen previously, the altar corresponds to Jesus’ Passover sacrifice; the bronze laver corresponds to the 7th Day of Unleavened Bread and to baptism.

So it seems that orange corresponds to the second Holy Day, the Last Day of Unleavened Bread, and that it also pictures baptism.

Many verses associate copper and bronze (a copper alloy) with the earth. For example, when God warned that He’d curse Israel for disobedience, He said, “I will make your heavens like iron and your earth like bronze” (Lev. 26:19). But if Israel obeyed, God promised “a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper” (Deut. 8:9). Job 28:2 observes, “Iron is taken from the earth, and copper is smelted from ore.”

Interestingly, the Hebrew word for bronze, n’khoshet (Strong’s # H5178), is related to the word for snake, nakhash (Strong’s # H5175). Thus, when God commanded Moses to make a bronze serpent (Num. 21:9), he made a נחש נחשת, a nakhash n’khoshet. This would be an orange, or reddish orange, serpent.

God’s Word usually presents serpents in a negative light. Satan, for example, is a serpent. He’s also called fiery dragon (Rev. 12:3). So we can easily see the bronze serpent and, by extension, the color orange, as a symbol of sin. A symbol of the earth, the world, and worldliness.

But here’s what Jesus taught us about the bronze serpent: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:14-15). How could an object associated with sin be a type of our sinless Messiah? Because God the Father “made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21).

As for fire, which we know to be orange, the Bible often associates it with purging sin. God consumed the sinners of Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone. Craftsmen refine gold and other metals with fire (Rev. 3:18) to remove the impurities and blemishes.

Fire also represents trials and tribulations because of sin. The Messiah suffered a “fiery trial” for our sins (1 Pet. 4:12-13), and we, too, suffer trials and tribulations in this life to cleanse us and purify us.

So when we put all this together, we see that the color orange not only represents sin, but also purification from sin. The bronze altar and the bronze laver in the tabernacle served purposes of purification. Yeshua became sin for us, symbolized by a bronze serpent, and underwent a fiery trial to destroy those sins. We undergo fiery trials to cleanse us from sin.

And what does the seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread picture? Sanctification, that is, the complete removal of sin. And what does the Last Day of Unleavened Bread picture? Baptism — which cleanses us from sin (Eph. 5:26; Heb. 10:22). Orange perfectly pictures the Last Day of Unleavened Bread!

Yellow

The third Holy Day is the Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost (Lev. 23:15-22). We know that God sent the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4).

So what does the color yellow have to do with this day? God’s Word mentions a few yellow things, such as gold, the sun, and olive oil.

At face value, gold portrays the best this world has to offer, and how worthless it is in comparison with the true riches: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Mat. 6:19-20). King David proclaimed, “The judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold” (Psa. 19:9-10).

But gold also portrays the value and the purity of God’s way of life. God instructed the Israelites to overlay all the furnishings within the tabernacle and the temple with gold: the lampstand, the table of showbread, the altar of incense, and the Ark of the Covenant. Jesus Christ uses “gold refined in the fire” as an illustration of righteousness (Rev. 3:18).

When we receive the Holy Spirit, we become the temple of God: “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” (1 Cor. 3:16). At this point, we frail humans made of clay “have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us” (2 Cor. 4:7). Thus, gold may be compared to the Holy Spirit.

As for the sun, it sometimes symbolizes Yeshua/Jesus: “The Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings” (Mal. 4:2). The sun is the light of the world; Yeshua is also the light of the world (John 8:12; 9:5). In order to have His light within us, we must also have His Spirit.

Finally, olive oil, too, pictures the Holy Spirit. The Israelites often used it for anointing oil, and olive oil fueled the lampstand in the tabernacle (Ex. 27:20; Lev. 24:2). Our Messiah (“Anointed One”) was anointed with the Holy Spirit at baptism (Acts 10:38), as are we His followers.

Green

The fourth color, green, coincides with the fourth Holy Day, the Day of Trumpets. Green pictures life. Each spring, green plants sprout from the earth, and trees shoot forth green leaves and branches.

God likens His people to green trees: “Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, and whose hope is the LORD. For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, which spreads out its roots by the river, and will not fear when heat comes; but its leaf will be green, and will not be anxious in the year of drought, nor will cease from yielding fruit” (Jer. 17:7-8).

God’s gift to those who obey Him is eternal life. King David visualized this gift as greenery: “But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God; I trust in the mercy of God forever and ever” (Psa. 52:8).

Now, many of us believe that the First Resurrection will happen on the Day of Trumpets. On this day, God will grant eternal life to His firstfruits: “Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed — in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality” (1 Cor. 15:51-53).

What better representation of the Day of Trumpets, then, than the color green!

Blue

Blue parallels the Day of Atonement. It also pictures the heavens, for blue is the color of the sky. It’s noteworthy that the Old Covenant high priests, who foreshadowed the heavenly High Priest, Jesus Christ, wore blue robes (Ex. 28:31).

On the Day of Atonement, I believe, for reasons presented in a previous post, that Jesus Christ will return to the earth, bind Satan, and begin His 1,000-year reign. The heavenly will come down to the earth.

But there’s another interesting fact, another piece of the puzzle. In the Bible, the Hebrew word for blue is t’kelet (Strong’s # H8504), which is used exactly 50 times in the Old Testament.

Why is this interesting, you might ask? Because 50 is the number of the Jubilee, and the Jubilee is proclaimed on the Day of Atonement:

9 Then you shall cause the trumpet of the Jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement you shall make the trumpet to sound throughout all your land.

10 ‘And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you; and each of you shall return to his possession, and each of you shall return to his family.

11 ‘That fiftieth year shall be a Jubilee to you; in it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows of its own accord, nor gather the grapes of your untended vine. (Lev. 25:9-11.)

Indigo

Indigo is sometimes described as blue-violet, for it’s a shade of blue verging on purple. It’s the bridge between blue and violet. Some birds and flowers and some grapes and plums are indigo, as are the late evening and early morning skies.

To the best of my knowledge, though, the Bible doesn’t distinguish between hues of blue. It's often thought, in fact, that the blue dye used in Bible days produced a blue violet color, or indigo.

Now, it would seem to make sense that the sixth color represents the Feast of Tabernacles. Indigo, or blue violet, would carry much of the same meaning as blue: Jesus Christ reigning on earth. Christ will reign on earth until the end of the Second Resurrection and the Great White Throne Judgment, “when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father” (1 Cor. 15:24).

Violet

Violet, the seventh and last color of the rainbow, corresponds to the Last Great Day. It’s the culmination of God’s entire plan. I believe that the Last Great Day, the eighth day, pictures the new heavens and new earth. Rev. 21:3-5 describes this as follows:

3 And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God.

4 “And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”

5 Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.”

Most Bible translations don’t mention violet, but we do find purple. Like blue and red, purple clothing was expensive and often associated with royalty. The Gospels of Mark and John describe Roman soldiers mocking Yeshua/Jesus by clothing Him in a purple robe and calling Him a king (Mark 15:17, 20; John 19:2, 5).

Unlike blue and red, though, there doesn’t seem to be any other meaning associated with purple. It’s simply a precious color, an emblem of wealth or royalty. It’s also an equal blend of blue and red, of the heavenly and the earthly.

We can see a picture, then, of the time when mankind will be one with God the Father and Jesus Christ. As we read in 1 Cor. 15:28, “Now when all things are made subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.” God will dwell with us forever, and we with Him.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this study has given us a deeper understanding of the rainbow. It’s a symbol, not only of God’s mercy toward all humanity, but also of His covenant with each of us. It’s a reminder of His throne and a picture of the heavenly. It reminds us of the promise that awaits us if we remain faithful to our Creator.

Everything that God does and everything He designs contains many layers of meaning. A lot like the rainbow and its seven colors!

If you have any disagreements or anything to add, please leave a comment below.