APPEARANCE OF THE BOW… IN THE DAY OF RAIN

At the first, God had made man in His image and after His ‘like­ness’, Gen. 1. 26. But, in fascinating reversal, Ezekiel sees the transcendent Lord Himself in ‘the likeness as the appearance of a man’. Yet, if the description of the One on the throne reminds us of Genesis chapter 1, ‘the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain’ takes us back to Genesis chapter 9. For there, God spoke repeatedly of the ‘bow … in the cloud’, Gen. 9. 12-17. He made it clear to Noah that ‘the bow’, was ‘a token’, a ‘sign’, of His covenant which He made with every living crea­ture on the earth.

On every occasion in the Old Testament, apart from Genesis chapter 9 and Ezekiel chapter1, the word rendered ‘bow’ refers to a military weapon, namely to a war-bow. It is as if God assured Noah that He would take the very weapon He had used to destroy the world of the ungodly, and would hang it in the sky to remind Him of His covenant-promise never again to visit the earth with a universal flood. ‘The bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature … that is upon the earth’, Gen. 9. 16. In this way, God transformed the instrument of His judgement into a sign of His mercy, the pledge that He would always prove faithful to His covenant-promise.

Ezekiel saw God’s chariot throne of judgement in the midst of the great storm-cloud which approached from the north. Judgement upon Jerusalem and Judah was now inescapable; hence, the sevenfold reference to ‘fire’ in the chapter. But ‘the bow’ of God’s covenanted mercy which surrounded the awe-inspiring Lord carried with it the assurance that, come what may, He would remain true to His covenant-promise to His peo­ple. In His wrath, He would remember mercy; see Hab. 3. 2.

True, He was poised to bend His ‘bow like an enemy’ against Zion and against Judah, Lam. 2. 4. But ‘the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain’ was the symbol of His faithfulness to His word of promise. And His people would yet say, ‘It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed … great is thy faithfulness’, Lam. 3. 22, 23.