HOW CAN GOD REGRET IF HE DOESN’T MAKE MISTAKES?

QUESTION: Gen 6:1-7 talks all about how God is sick of humans and how sorry He is that he made them.  But if God doesn’t make mistakes… and He knows everything before it happens… Then how could He be sorry?

IS GOD SURPRISED OR PRONE TO ERROR?

ANSWER: You are correct in your assumption that for God to have true regret for something, just exactly as humans have regret, this would be a real problem.  It would be a problem for God’s goodness and perfection because it would imply, as you said, a mistake.  It would also be a problem for his omniscience because it would imply that there’s an outcome he didn’t see coming.

These problems are exacerbated by the way the verse has been translated:

The KJV’s use of the word “repent” for God’s feelings is an even stronger indication of sin or error in God than the ESV’s “regret”.  So we have to look at this particular word to see if we have the author implying error or limitedness in God, or not.

THE WORD “NACHAM”

The word in question is “nacham” (נָחַם,).  It is often translated as “repent” because it can covey deep regret over sin. Such as in:

In other words, God never needs to repent, as we do, because God doesn’t sin as we do.

However, “nacham” can also mean “change in dealings.”  For example, the same word is used in Jonah 3:10:

So the God whom Moses says never needs to “nacham“, “nachams“! How can that be? Well, we must understand the elastic nature of most Hebrew words. They often do double or triple duty in meaning multiple, related but different things. Note then, the NLT here says that God “repented” of a proposed action (destroying the city of Nineveh). 

But this change does not imply God made a mistake or that his initial direction was wrong.  In fact, the verse makes it very clear that God’s change of mind mirrored the changing conditions on the ground.  The Ninevites repented, so God relented.  There is no imperfection implied in this, since it’s a simple follow through of an “if/then” proposition.  Do this, get this result.  Do something different, get a different result.

Now, in Genesis, the word cannot mean “changed his mind” for in that case God would have had to eliminate humans altogether.  If God changed his mind about creating image bearing life, the correct course of action would be to cut off the human tree entirely.  Instead, as you know, in the flood narrative God merely pruned the tree back.

WHEN “NACHAM” MEANS SORROW

So this is where we note another meaning for “nacham” which is the idea of grief or sorrow.  This is a very natural meaning because the root of “nacham” is to sigh, i.e. breathe strongly. So it has a natural root indicating sorrow. Positively this sorrow could be pity, or negatively, it could be to rue. So, rather than a newfound surprise or the indication of error, this usage of the word means that an action has led to great sadness or anguish.

But in the case of God, this usage always flows from the sinful or evil actions of others, not God. For example:

So again, “regret” does not mean God saw what he did as a mistake, but rather because of Saul’s actions, God is experiencing grief.  “I’m experiencing sorrow because I made Saul king.”  Again, notice in the follow up sentence, it was not sorrow over God making a mistake, but rather sorrow that Saul made a mistake: “turned from following me.”

GOD EXPERIENCES SADNESS

This is the sense of “nachum” we have back in Genesis 6. The context indicates this nicely, because the whole sentence is: “The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.”  If God’s heart is “deeply troubled”, this simply means God has feelings.  And his feelings are appropriate for the conditions.  Thus in this case, “nacham” means sorrow.  Which justifies these clarifying translations:

CAN GOD HAVE FEELINGS?

Now, the fact that this passage indicates deep wells of emotion in God may present a new problem.  Some people believe that God is completely impassive – that is, he has no emotions, is unmoved at all by anything.  That kind of God has been believed by some Christian thinkers throughout history, but more due to their infatuation with Greek philosophy than with Biblical teaching.  For in the Bible, it could hardly be clearer that God, yes the Great “I Am”, First Cause and Creator, has feelings.

This fact does not indicate error in God, or weakness or mutability or limitedness. It merely says that, like us made in God’s image, God experiences the full range of emotions.  He has anger and sadness and sorrow and grief and joy.

GOD EXPERIENCES GRIEF

So in the case of his decision to create people, he experiences the appropriate emotion to go along with his assessment of their deeds – an assessment given right before the declaration of God’s “regret”.  The text says, “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.” 

If such a situation doesn’t bring God grief, there is no way we could call such a God good.  But in fact, it does bring God grief (“nacham”).  As the same author says in the following sentence, sin fills God’s heart with pain.

WHEN REGRET IS NOT ERROR OR SURPRISE

So, it’s not a problem to think that God could foresee human rebellion before he even makes humans, and yet still feel grief over our sin.  Just as parents surely know before they have children that children will bring them no end of negative emotion, worry, fear, anxiety, anger.  But that doesn’t mean A) it’s an error to have children, nor B) that the grief they sometimes bring is a total surprise.

So, the lesson to take from Genesis 6:6 is that God has feelings too.  And to ingest this incredible notion:  God is very much our Heavenly Father, who experiences all the grief from his children’s rebellion as any parent would.  And more, of course, because only God understands just exactly how deeply our sin cuts against the reality of his truth, beauty and goodness.

Human parenting grief can only scratch the surface of such sorrow.