I was asked to provide comments on the rainbow in the Bible. Here are some for starters:
1. God puts his warbow in the sky for HIM to see and remember the covenant.
2. In Revelation 4-5, this warbow is around His throne, so He sees it all the time.
a. It’s green, emerald.
b. Emerald is the stone of Levi (BHOP 19: Behind the Scenes)
c. The Levites were camped in a square closest around the Tabernacle.
3. The other tribes have other colors, and at are the next rank around the Tabernacle.
a. In Revelation 21-22, the City has these twelve colored stones at her border.
b. The colored stones are chips of frozen rainbow.
c. God’s people are His rainbow, through which He views the world.
4. Baptism, especially by sprinkling, puts rainbow on us.
a. Rainbow is caused by light prisming through water.
b. In baptism, God’s light is prismed through water to us, rainbowizing us, so we join the rainbow.
c. Baptism washes away sin, but also glorifies (rainbowizes) and enlists us in the Rainbow Army for holy war.
5. In the Tabernacle, two tapestries encircled the rooms inside and out, at the upper and lower levels.
a. These had cherubim (guardians) on them.
b. They were woven of red, blue, purple, and white: rainbow colors. (Red and Blue-purple are the extremes of the rainbow prism.)
c. They signified the angelic rainbow host around God.
6. The High Priest had the same rainbow colors on him.
a. His garment had the same colors.
b. He wore the rainbow stones on his chest.
c. Now we are all made high priests, living rainbow warriors.
7. In the ritual of Ascension (Leviticus 1), the worshipper is by proxy put into the rainbow colors of the fire, after being divested of his old skin-clothes, and receives new fire-rainbow clothes.
a. Again, this is like the High Priest.
b. It is also the rainbow colors of the bride, as the worshipper ascends by proxy as an ‘ishsheh, a bride for Yahweh.
c. Psalm 45 is a human explication of this ritual.
d. We are all dressed in rainbow to be part of the bride of Christ.
[...] Published March 2, 2009 biblical theology Jim Jordan, inventing words and giving us a biblical theology of the rainbow. [...]
Mr Jordan
I enjoy the way you think. And it is about time the rainbow was rescued from the tired old New Age.
The Tabernacle imagery is as much fun as it is grand and terrifying. I was thinking about rainbow striped onyx. In “Behind the Scenes”, you wrote:
“These glorious gems represent the sons matured into tribes. A baby has not yet matured into anything specific. We don’t know if a child will become a good person or a bad one. We don’t know if he will be a musician or a minister or a farmer or a sailor or a computer engineer. As we grow, we grow from being “striped onyx” into a specific glory, which each of us has unique to himself. Thus, as the twelve sons of Jacob matured into tribes, each tribe took on a distinct glory of its own, represented by its gemstone.”
Gold, onyx and bdellium were raw materials from the original World. The white capstone in Zechariah was bdellium, representing glorified bread. With the correspondence between manna and bdellium, there is perhaps the idea that the white stone is the bread of obedient priesthood finally glorified as metal—an eternal priesthood. The root word for bdellium also means “to divide”. The bread is a sacrifice, but the white stone is bread resurrected, or bread and wine, service and glory, united. A white stone is a metal (robed) man with a new, more glorious name (Revelation 2:17). He is lifted up between heaven and earth as a human firmament.
With a golden forehead (Word) and onyx shoulders (angelic proto-Government), the High Priest himself was the bdellium-bread (Sacrament) (John 6:48-51). The twelve gems on his breastplate were the resulting mature “offspring” of rivers (fulfilled human Government) that flowed down to glorify the World. This supports your view that Revelation shows the matured saints leaving Abraham’s bosom and entering the bosom (breastplate) of Christ.
Also, if bdellium is the Table (hidden manna), the rainbow striped onyx-elders are the Incense Altar (Aaron’s rod), and of course the gold forehead would be the seven-eyed Lampstand (the Law).
Havilah, the prototype World, was for “Holy Place” commerce, for worship as buying and selling. As the saints carry the rainbow waters in baptism, the New Covenant economy puts the world into God’s cloud.
Another thought:
The first time the White Horse rode out (into the Land – Book of Acts, Rev. 6), He had a bow in His hand. The second time He rode out (into the World – Rev. 19), the rain-bow was those who followed Him on white horses, the ascended government of the saints – basically the same people who accompanied Him in Acts. But the mediatorial government (the Holy Place “Land”) was now in heaven.