The Rainbow

"And this is how you shall make it" (Genesis 6:15). Rabbi Shemayah taught: With His finger the Holy One, blessed be He, showed Noah and said to him: "Like this and like this you shall make the ark." One hundred and fifty rods was the length of the right side of the ark, and one hundred and fifty the length on its left side; the thirty-three rods on the side of its breadth at its walls toward its rear, and ten in the middle. These are for storehouses of food. Rabbi Tanchuma says: Fifty-two years Noah spent making the ark, in order that they might return in repentance from their ways and from their evil deeds. And before the Flood came, the impure ones were more numerous than the pure. The Holy One, blessed be He, wished to increase the pure and to diminish the impure. Rabbi Tzadok says: On the tenth of Marcheshvan all the creatures entered the ark. On the seventeenth of it the waters of the Flood came down upon the earth, which are male waters, and they rose up from the depths, which are female waters, and these joined with those and prevailed to destroy the world, as it is said: "And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth" (Genesis 7:19). Noah sent the raven to know what was in the world. It went off and found a human corpse upon the tops of the mountains, and it settled down to its food and did not return to its mission to the one who sent it. He sent the dove, and it returned its mission, as it is said: "And the dove came in to him at evening time, and behold, in its mouth an olive leaf freshly plucked" (Genesis 8:11). Noah sat and expounded in his heart and said: "The Holy One, blessed be He, saved me from the waters of the Flood and brought me out of that confinement; am I not obligated to offer before Him a sacrifice and burnt offerings?" Immediately Noah brought of the kind of pure cattle, an ox and a sheep and a goat, and of the kind of pure bird, turtledoves and young pigeons, and built the altar. And a pleasing aroma went up before the Holy One, blessed be He, as it is said: "And the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma" (Genesis 8:21). What did the Holy One, blessed be He, do? He stretched out His right hand and swore to him not to bring the waters of the Flood upon the earth again, as it is said: "For this is to Me as the waters of Noah, concerning which I swore" (Isaiah 54:9), and so forth, and He set a bow as a sign of the covenant. An oath between Him and the earth, as it is said: "I have set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of the covenant" (Genesis 9:13). And the Sages instituted that they should mention the oath of Noah every day, as it is said: "That your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, upon the land" (Deuteronomy 11:21).