from WL Worcester (H Blackmer, ed.), 
The Sower.  Helps to the Study of the Bible in Home and Sunday School
 
(Boston: Massachusetts New-Church Union, n.d.)

Table of Contents
 

 

Lesson 8

Genesis 9:1-23: The Rainbow

The Story

Primary

Another time of goodness had come in the world after the flood of evil had gone. The happy people are called Noah and his family. The Lord blessed them and gave them power to use and to enjoy all the good things that He had made. The animals and plants could give them food and clothing. What food do the animals give us? Milk and butter and eggs and honey and their own flesh; and wool and leather and silk are used for clothes. The plants give us all the fruits and grains, cotton for cloth and wood for our houses. Every year people are finding out more and more of the substances and forces which the Lord has stored up in the earth, to add to the pleasure and comfort of our life. He wants us to enjoy all the good and pleasant things in the world. Pleasures are food for the spirit on which it lives and grows strong, only we must enjoy the pleasant things in good, kind ways and make them help and not hinder us in getting ready for the life of heaven.

A rainbow is one of the very lovely things that we may see in this world. Have you all seen a rainbow? Where do we see it, and when? You remember the beautiful arch across the sky, perhaps toward the end of a shower when the sun, rather low in the sky, was shining through the rain. There were in the bow all the bright colors, from red to violet, which we see when the sun's light shines through a prism. (Show the colors through a prism.) The colors are very beautiful when we see them against dark clouds.

To the good people after the flood, Noah and his family, the rainbow was especially beautiful because it was a special sign to them that the Lord remembered them and loved them. We can have the same thought about a rainbow when we see one in the sky, and it will give us a still greater thrill of pleasure. Read Gen. 9:8-17.

Junior

Have all the children seen a rainbow? Where do we see it, and when do we see it? How does it look? It is a beautiful arch of colors stretching across the clouds when the sun shines at the same time that the rain is falling. It comes usually when the storm or shower is clearing away. From the inner edge of the bow to the outer we see the colors shading from red through yellow to green and blue and violet. Can someone tell us what makes the bow? All the colors are in the sunshine; they are separated when the sunshine passes through the raindrops as they are when it shines through a glass prism, and we see the colors against the cloud. A rainbow is one of the most beautiful things that is seen in this world, and beautiful rainbows are seen in heaven, and they are all the more beautiful because they have a meaning. When we see the bow we know that the sun is shining, and it is a sign that the storm will clear away. It should remind us that when there are dark times and times of trial the Lord still loves us and will bring us happiness again.

A beautiful rainbow gives us a feeling of joy. Who was it who wrote "My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky"? Have you ever seen rainbows in other places? In the spray of a waterfall, or in the spray of a fountain sprinkling the grass?

After reading our story today, the rainbow ought to be to us more than a thing of beauty. It should also seem to say, when we see it, that the Lord remembers us. We think it a very new and wonderful thing for an airplane to write words in the sky, but from long, long ago the Lord has written in the rainbow against the clouds this message of His love. Do you know any other places in Scripture where a rainbow is mentioned?

They were good happy people who are meant by Noah and his family, but they were different from the people who are meant by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. They were not so childlike and loving as the people of earlier days; they cared more for learning; they had also more knowledge of the arts, they knew how to write and handed down much of their learning to the Egyptians and other ancient nations. The first happy days were called the Golden Age; the happy days after the flood were the Silver Age.

1. What was given to Noah and his family to eat, besides what was given to Adam?

2. Tell me some ways in which the Lord has made animals useful to people?

3. Is it right to enjoy play and eating and other pleasant things?

4. What makes the beautiful colors of the rainbow? What should it bring to mind, which makes the rainbow still more beautiful?

5. What did Noah plant? How were the people of these days different from those of the first happy days?

SPIRITUAL STUDY

Intermediate

Look a little more deeply into the meaning of the first seven verses, which is suggested in the first section of the lesson for the younger children. What deeper meaning is contained in the fact that the Lord gave people dominion over the animals and all things of the earth? It means also that He gave dominion over all things of their own lower nature. He gave the power to enjoy these things in good innocent ways, and to make them useful to spiritual life. The fear and dread of people falling upon every beast means the power to restrain and control all evil affections and thoughts. The permission to eat flesh means the power to use natural enjoyments of play and eating and all pleasant things in a way that is good and strengthening to spiritual life. Everything "that liveth" being for meat means that we must be careful that the heavenly spirit, the spirit of use, is present in all enjoyments; it is this that makes them living. We must not enjoy food or any pleasure in a self-indulgent way, but with a thought of what is useful. The warning about eating the blood means that we must not destroy the heavenly spirit of charity and use. (A. 994, 995, 1001)

Read Gen. 1:29, 30, and A. 1002.

What law given to them of old time does verse 6 remind you of? (Matt. 5:38) What principle of spiritual life was expressed in the old requirement that one should be punished for doing injury by suffering the same injury himself? It means that in doing wrong to others we hurt our own spiritual life. The same principle was taught by the Lord by the Golden Rule. Can you repeat it? See also Luke 6:38. (A. 1011, 1012)

The rainbow is formed by the sunshine passing through the raindrops, and is seen against the cloud. What are the clouds and rain of the mind? Gentle rain represents teaching which is cleansing and refreshing. (Isa. 55:10) Dark stormy clouds represent thoughts so ignorant and false that they shut out the Lord and His loving presence. The ignorant, false thoughts of the Jews were represented by the dark clouds which hid the Lord upon Mount Sinai. The ignorant and imperfect thoughts of the disciples were represented by the cloud which shaded the Lord's glory on the mountain of Transfiguration, but then it was a bright cloud. The warm sunshine coming through the cloud and rain is something of the Lord's great love which comes to us even though our knowledge is imperfect and in many things quite false. The Lord comes to children through their simple thoughts of Him; He comes to heathen people through such knowledge as they have; He comes to us in dark and troubled states; and wherever His love is felt, the ignorant and false thoughts will do no great harm. It is the sunshine through the rain, a sign of His remembrance, giving comfort and hope. The sense of the Lord's goodness in such partial and modified ways as we are able to receive is the rainbow in the cloud. (A. 1043, 1051; E. 595; R. 466) What color in the rainbow seems especially to be a sign of the Lord's infinite love?

The rainbow was the token of the Lord's covenant with the Ancient Church. In common use, a covenant is a contract between parties, as a business covenant, or a marriage covenant. There is no business contract between the Lord and His church. Here a covenant means the kind of relation, of conjunction, existing between the Lord and the church. And the covenant was different and the token of the covenant different with successive churches, because the people of these churches were different. With the Ancient Church, the bow was the token of the covenant. In the Jewish Church, the ark in which the Commandments were kept was "the ark of the covenant." For the Christian Church, the Lord instituted the Holy Supper. And remember how He said, as He passed the cup, "This cup is the new covenant (or testament) in my blood which is shed for you."

Can we see how the rainbow pictures beautifully the kind of relation which existed between the Ancient Church, Noah, and the Lord? The relation was not one purely of love, as had been the relation of the people of the Most Ancient Church of Garden of Eden days. The people of the Ancient Church were kept in living relation with the Lord by learning the Lord's truth, and as they obeyed the truth intelligently they came into states of charity. The raindrops are the symbols of the Lord's truth received by them from heaven, and the sunshine is the symbol of His love which they found in doing His truth. The rainbow would not have been a true symbol of the Lord's relation with the Most Ancient Church, nor with the Jewish Church; but it pictured beautifully and truly the relation of the Lord with this Church of Noah. There would not be another flood, if through knowledge of the truth, even imperfect knowledge, they came into states of charity.

In verse 20 we read that Noah began to be a husbandman and planted a vineyard. What is represented by wine and the vine? Spiritual intelligence. Why is it said that Noah planted the vine rather than Adam? Because spiritual intelligence was characteristic of this Silver Age, but not of the Golden Age. What can be meant by the saying that Noah drank of the wine and was drunken? Read Isa. 5:20-23. People are spiritually drunken when intelligence makes them proud; then they lose their wisdom and fall into many foolish and evil things. This was the danger of the people represented by Noah. (A. 1068, 1069, 1072)

Verse 23 contains a beautiful lesson of Christian charity. It teaches that we ought not to notice the faults of others, to accuse them and make fun of them; we ought to judge kindly, to pass by faults of ignorance and to see all that is good and beautiful. Evil spirits, we are told, search out what is bad in people, but angels look for what is good. (A. 1088)

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