Parshat Noach5 min read

Noah Saw a Rainbow and Solomon Decoded Its Secret

Noah saw a rainbow and called it a covenant. Solomon saw the same symbol and called it a doorway into the divine names. The mystics said both were right.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Promise After the Water
  2. The Daughter of the King
  3. Solomon's Reading
  4. The Rainbow Above and the Rainbow Below
  5. The Covenant That Was Also a Key

The Promise After the Water

After the flood drained and the ground dried and Noah stepped out of the ark into a world empty of almost everything that had existed before it, God made a promise. The bow in the cloud. My bow, set in the clouds, as a covenant between me and every living creature for all future generations. When the cloud gathers and the bow appears, I will remember the covenant and the waters will not again become a flood to destroy all flesh.

Noah heard this as what it plainly was: a promise that the worst had happened and would not happen again. The rainbow was a covenant seal, a divine signature on an agreement that the world would be permitted to continue. Noah went back to planting and building and the business of repopulating a devastated earth, and the rainbow remained in the sky as a periodic reminder that the promise held.

The Tikkunei Zohar, composed in thirteenth-century Spain, agreed that it was a promise. Then it kept going.

The Daughter of the King

The mystics read the rainbow as a symbol pointing somewhere deeper than covenant. When the bow appears in the cloud, they said, something in the divine architecture becomes visible that is usually hidden. The colors of the rainbow are the outer manifestation of the sefirot, the divine emanations through which the infinite God interacts with the finite world. What Noah saw in the sky was the structure of divine energy bending toward the visible.

The Tikkunei Zohar spoke of a moment when the two names of God, the name of judgment and the name of mercy, unite as one, and in that unity the daughter of the King is aroused. The daughter of the King is the Shekhinah, the divine feminine presence, the aspect of God that dwells within creation rather than above it. The rainbow is the sign of that unity. Its appearance means the two names have aligned, the stern and the merciful, and the Shekhinah moves through the created world in her full presence.

Solomon's Reading

Centuries after Noah, Solomon saw what Noah had seen and went further still. The Tikkunei Zohar placed Solomon in a long chain of witnesses who understood the rainbow as more than meteorology and more than covenant reminder. Solomon, whose wisdom exceeded every other human wisdom, read the rainbow as a cipher for the divine names, a visible encoding of the hidden structure of God's interaction with creation.

The letters that the Tikkunei Zohar placed at the opening of this teaching, the sequences of divine names in their various permutations, were not mystical decoration. They were the code Solomon had learned to read in the rainbow. The colors were the names. The arc was the structure. The appearance of the bow in the cloud was God writing the divine name across the sky in the only alphabet legible to the kind of eyes Solomon had developed.

What Noah received as comfort Solomon received as instruction. The same phenomenon, seen through two different levels of perception, yielding two different but not contradictory forms of knowledge.

The Rainbow Above and the Rainbow Below

The mystics went higher. The earthly rainbow, they taught, had a counterpart in the highest heaven. Above Aravot, the seventh and highest heaven, arched a rainbow of the Shekhinah, a divine bow that was to the earthly rainbow as a cause is to its shadow. The rainbow Noah saw after the flood was a reflection of something that had always existed in the divine realm, a manifestation in the material world of a structure that was embedded in the architecture of creation from before the beginning.

Ezekiel had seen it. His vision of the divine chariot culminated in an image: "Like the appearance of the bow which shines in the clouds on a day of rain, such was the appearance of the surrounding radiance." The radiance that surrounded the divine throne was the same phenomenon Noah saw over the drained floodwaters and Solomon decoded in his wisdom. One rainbow at three levels: the earthly sign, the divine presence in creation, and the radiance that encircles God's own throne.

The Covenant That Was Also a Key

None of this displaced what the rainbow had been for Noah. The promise was real. The covenant was real. The waters would not again cover the earth and take everything with them. That dimension of meaning remained intact at every level of the reading, because the Tikkunei Zohar understood that the simplest meaning of a text was not superseded by its deeper meanings but was carried along inside them.

Noah needed the promise. He had survived the destruction of everything he knew and needed assurance that it would not happen again. God gave him what he needed. Solomon, in a world that had been stable for centuries, needed the instruction encoded in the same symbol. God gave him what he needed too. The rainbow served both men at once, the way a door can be both a threshold and a frame, a passage and a boundary, depending on which side of it you are standing on.

NoahSolomonKabbalahSefirotShekhinahTorahCovenant
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From the tradition

Sources

2 sources

The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Tikkunei Zohar 58:7Tikkunei Zohar

It’s a deep, often cryptic exploration of the Torah, revealing layers of meaning hidden beneath the surface. It's not always an easy read, but it’s always rewarding.

Our passage opens with a string of what seem like… well, gibberish. ALePh QE YOD QE, YOD QE VAV QE, and so on. What's going on here? These aren't random letters. They're coded references to divine names and energies, a kind of Kabbalistic shorthand.

The text then tells us: "At that time: when the two Names are as one, the daughter of the King will be aroused…" Intriguing. Who is this daughter of the King? In Kabbalah, the "daughter of the King" often refers to the Shekhinah, the divine feminine presence, the immanent aspect of God that dwells within creation. And the "two Names"? Well, that could refer to various pairings of divine names, each representing a different aspect of God's relationship to the world. The key is their unification. When these energies are in harmony, something profound happens.

What sparks this arousal? According to the Tikkunei (spiritual repair) Zohar, it's "through Song of Songs and Proverbs and Ecclesiastes." These three books of the Bible, seemingly so different in tone and content, are seen as keys to unlocking this divine connection. Remember King Solomon, traditionally credited with writing these books? The passage even references his wisdom: "(1 King. 5:12)... three thousand parables.."

Then comes the really juicy part: "…three Yods, which are the three ‘drops’ of the brain which descend from Yod [Var. Vav], and to where are they extended? Towards ‘the Righteous-One’, Yesod (Foundation)." Okay, let's unpack this. Yod (י) and Vav (ו) are letters in the Hebrew alphabet that also represent divine attributes. The "three drops of the brain" are a metaphor for divine emanations, the flow of creative energy from the higher realms. These "drops" descend towards Yesod, often translated as "Foundation," which in the Sefirot (the ten attributes/emanations through which God reveals Himself) is associated with the Righteous One. Yesod is also connected to the covenant, and is often seen as the rainbow.

According to this passage, it’s in Yesod, "who is the rainbow of the covenant," that "that which was small is made large." The Yod, the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet, represents a point of pure potential. Through this process, that tiny spark of potential expands, blossoms, and fills the world. Small becomes large.

What does it all mean? Well, like much of Kabbalah, it’s not about finding a simple, literal answer. It’s about engaging with the text, meditating on its symbols, and allowing its wisdom to seep into your consciousness. This passage suggests that by connecting to the divine through scripture, by seeking harmony and unity, and by embracing the potential within even the smallest of things, we can participate in the ongoing process of creation. We can help to arouse the Shekhinah, to bring the divine presence more fully into the world.

So, the next time you see a rainbow, remember this passage. Remember the Yod, the tiny spark of potential. And remember that even in the smallest of things, there is the possibility for something vast and beautiful to emerge. Maybe, just maybe, you hold the key.

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3 Enoch 22:5, 22C:4, 22C:73 Enoch

What we see here is just a reflection of something far grander: the rainbow of the Shekhinah (the Divine Presence).

The Shekhinah, often translated as "Divine Presence," is the aspect of God that dwells among us, that's closest to creation. And the rainbow? (Genesis 9:13) tells us, "I have set My bow in the clouds." It's God's promise, a reminder of the covenant never to destroy the world by flood again.

The mystics take it even further. This earthly rainbow, they say, has a heavenly counterpart. A rainbow of the Shekhinah that arches above Aravot, the highest heaven. Can you picture it?

It doesn't stop there. Think about Ezekiel's famous vision (Ezekiel 1:28): "Like the appearance of the bow which shines in the clouds on a day of rain, such was the appearance of the surrounding radiance." That radiance, that celestial light, is intimately tied to the Merkavah, the Divine Chariot. We find that the clouds of the rainbow surround the very Throne of Glory itself! Above the arches of the rainbow, are the wheels of the Merkavah, known as the wheels of the Ophanim.

Now, here's where it gets really interesting. The rainbow itself, this incredible arc of divine light, rests upon the shoulders of an angel: Kerubiel, the Prince of the Cherubim.

Imagine this being. As we learn, for instance, in 3 Enoch, he's described in almost the same fiery terms as Metatron, another powerful angel. Kerubiel’s mouth is like a lamp of fire, his tongue a consuming fire, eyebrows like lightning, and eyes like sparks of brilliance. On his head sits a crown of holiness, engraved with God's Name. And between his shoulders? The rainbow of the Shekhinah. And the splendor of the Shekhinah shines on his face.

It's a powerful image, isn't it? This gigantic angel, holding the rainbow. The Zohar, that foundational text of Kabbalah, doesn't shy away from these kinds of vivid descriptions.

Why an angel holding the rainbow? Some say Kerubiel represents the sun.: rainbows often appear after the rain, when the sun breaks through the clouds. The rainbow resting on the angel's shoulders becomes a potent symbol of renewal and hope.

As Ginzberg retells it in Legends of the Jews and as we find in Midrash Rabbah, these images aren't just pretty stories. They’re attempts to grasp the ungraspable, to understand the Divine in ways that resonate with our human experience. They link the earthly and the heavenly, reminding us that even in the darkest of times, the light of the Shekhinah, the promise of the rainbow, is always there.

So, next time you see a rainbow, remember Kerubiel, the Prince of the Cherubim, and the rainbow of the Shekhinah. Remember the promise, the connection, and the ever-present Divine light shining through. What does the rainbow symbolize for you?

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