In this chapter Kuyper underscores a few points: While God had displayed grace toward humanity immediately after the Fall (a point he will develop at length later in the book), that grace was limited. What God did do was permit human beings to live out the implications of their rebellion until the “earth was filled with violence” (Gen. 6:11) [It strangely seems lost upon humanity that violence is evidence of God’s wrath against sin, because God is not restraining sin. Sin is its own punishment and carries within it, its own sorrow. No matter its original appearance, its trajectory is always the same.]

But at the point of Noah, God imposed a new order upon the world: the physical world would never again be such that a universal flood could occur; the animal world changed and the relationship to animals. Importantly, God also acted to restrain certain temporal aspects of sin. God acted to restrain sin: not fully; but he would to permit it to unleash itself upon the world in full furry until the time of the Son of Perdition.

The rainbow was marked as the sign of the covenant (the bow being a war bow, as in bow and arrow).

This points to the spiritual aspect of this covenant which on its face concerns only physical concerns. The covenant as in place to preserve humanity. The purpose of this covenant, lies “with the elect.”

There has been a failure to consider the significance of this covenant, even among theologians and preachers.