The Noahic Covenant

In contrast with the Abrahamic and "Old" covenants [1], the Noahic covenant of Genesis 9 is with the entirety of living creation on this world.  Following the great flood, Yahweh makes a pivotal decision about how he will treat created life, by extension even if the same sins that led to the flood in the first place were repeated.  The covenant is not made exclusively with human males as a certain kind of reader might think--yes, I have talked with many people in the years before this post's release date who have said similarly asinine things!  The language of God initially addressing Noah and his sons (9:8-9), first of all, does not logically necessitate this.

Second, whether they think it is positive or negative, this kind of philosophically inaccurate and textually incomplete "literalism" does not even represent what the rest of the flood narrative (and that of the subsequent events) does say.  God cannot make a covenant with every living creature (9:10, 15-16), including the non-human animals carried on the ark, which in turn included females of their kind (6:18-20, 7:1-3, 6-9), and not involve female humans as a subgroup of the human party on the other side of the covenant.  In Genesis 6, everyone but Noah and his family is treated as violent and hyper-bent towards sin (6:5-7, 11-13), which would include women, and part of humanity, including women, was to survive the flood and aid in realizing God's decree to repopulate the planet (9:1, 7).  Men are not the problem that needed to be rectified by the flood and they are not blessed by God afterward in any way that women are not.

As for the actual content of the covenant, God says that there will never again be water that claims the lives of everything living on land (except those spared on the ark, of course), that a flood will never again devastate the world in this manner (Genesis 9:8-11).  The rainbow is formed as a visual reminder of this covenant that God makes with all living things on Earth (9:12-16).  Whenever God brings clouds over the world, he will see the rainbow, the text says, and remember that he will never cause or allow the waters to become a flood of such a magnitude that it will kill all animals, humans among them.  This is not, however, a denial of any grand eschatological destruction altogether or a promise to never inflict any calamity at all on the world.

The Bible does say that creation is to be eventually dismissed from existence and remade (Isaiah 65:17-19).  Revelation 21:1 mentions that the old heavens and old earth have passed away by the time New Jerusalem is revealed, specifying nothing about the supernatural or natural means by which this would be brought about.  It is 2 Peter 3:10-13 that describes the former creation as being consumed by fire, perhaps by the very same fires of hell that 2 Peter 2:6 says will reduce the wicked to ashes (see also Malachi 4:1-3).  As such, the eschatological destruction of the cosmos by fire would ensure that the Noahic covenant is honored, although refusing to destroy the living things of the world with water is not something God had to restrict himself to.

The Noahic covenant, affirming the punitive flood of Genesis and yet expressing divine mercy in its aftermath, thus has relevance to what the Bible describes as befalling the cosmos in the last days before a new heavens and new earth are fashioned.  While at least some violent sins like those that provoked the flood incur the terrestrial judgments of Revelation--Revelation 9:21 mentions murder among the sins of the unrepentant, though murder is far from the only or worst manifestation of violence--Yahweh is not to bring about the deserved state of mass death (Ezekiel 18:4, Romans 1:32, 6:23) by the same means as before.  As much as he regretted creating humankind, he does not want to repeat a deluge of this devastating effect.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-old-covenant.html