And Jehovah repented that he had made Man on the earth, and it grieved him in his heart.
Genesis 6 turns from man's spreading wickedness to how that wickedness struck God Himself. Can the God who knows everything regret what He made, and can a creature's sin really grieve his Creator?
Why God Was Grieved
God brought the flood for two reasons, not one. One writer sorts them into what man did and what man was:
The Spirit of God has chosen to tell us two grounds on which God brought the judgment of the flood on man. First, because of what he had done: "the wickedness of man was great in the earth." Further on we read that this took two forms, corruption and violence. Second, because of what he was: "every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually"; or, as the margin reads, "the purposes and desires of his heart" were such.
The verse names the LORD, not God considered in the abstract. He watches His creatures, and here He finds nothing to credit them with:
This is not God simply in His nature, but the God who concerns Himself with the ways of His creatures... He who loves to credit the least good thought or feeling saw nothing but evil all the day.
What "Repented" Means Here
Older translations say God "repented." The ESV reads that He "regretted." Either way, the word does not mean what it usually means for us:
Much depends on grasping the meaning of the word "repent." In Scripture it does not usually mean remorse or sorrow, as so many think. It means a change or turnaround in the attitude of the mind... In any sense of regret or remorse about His personal actions, we are assured that God "is not a man that He should repent."
So God speaks here in terms we can feel. Writers note that these early chapters often speak this way:
No doubt, as is so typical of these early revelations, grace shapes the words in a childlike way for the heart and conscience of man. The LORD felt deeply what man ought to have felt but did not.
Real Feeling, Not a Figure of Speech
Words fitted to us are not words emptied of truth. One writer weighs what this grief must have cost God, then asks a hard question:
God is infinitely great, and His holy nature is spotless and pure. So His grief must have been infinite. Yet He must have known in advance that this great grief would come to Him through the fall and corruption of mankind. Why then did God make man, and then let him stay on earth after causing Him such untold grief?
Set beside the opening chapters, the verse reverses God's own verdict on His work:
At the end of Genesis 2 God called everything, man included, "very good." Once man had been very good in God's eyes. Now he was nothing but grief to look at. The break was complete.
What God Never Repents Of
If God can repent of making man, a believer might wonder whether He can repent of saving one. The distinction drawn is between an act and a gift:
The gifts of God are without change of mind on His part. When it is not a gift or a calling of God, He may repent. So He repented of creation (Gen. 6:6), as we are told; and He destroyed it. That was not a gift; but simply an act, however immense. But in sovereign love He calls poor guilty men to Himself to make them His own. He gives eternal life, for instance, or forgiveness of our sins, or the place of a child. Such gifts are the gifts and calling of God, and they come without any change of mind.
Delight Restored
Grief is not God's last word about man. The delight He lost is found again in Christ, the child born at Bethlehem:
All this delight was changed; God repented that He had made man on the earth. But in the Child of Bethlehem man is recovered and set up again. God delights in this man, and no such change of mind is possible. No other object in all His creation could awaken the same delight.
Summary
- Seen — God judged what man did and what man was: corruption and violence outside, evil thoughts within.
- Felt — God found nothing good to credit in man. He felt what man should have felt and did not.
- Worded — "repented" means a changed attitude, not remorse. Scripture uses childlike terms so our hearts can take it in.
- Unchanged — God may repent of an act like creation. He never repents of a gift: eternal life, forgiveness, the place of a child.
- Restored — the delight God lost in the first man returns in Christ, and nothing can reverse it.