The Question of God Repenting or Changing His Mind

by Terry Wane Benton

A skeptic thought he found a flaw in the Bible and the God of the Bible. He believes the following is a contradiction in the Bible:

Does God change his mind?

• "For I am the Lord; I change not" (Malachi 3:6).
• "God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent" (Numbers 23:19).
• "I, the LORD, have spoken; it is coming and I will act. I will not relent" (Ezekiel 24:14).
• "Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow" (James 1:17).

But on the other hand: "And the Lord repented of the evil which he had thought to do unto his people" (Exodus 32:14). Also Genesis 6:6; Jonah 3:10; I Samuel 2:30-31; II Kings 20:1-6; Numbers 16:20-35).

The nature of God does not change, nor does His word and will change except in conjunction with higher plans and purposes. But those “changes” are from man’s perspective as he sees changes take place, while God planned those changes from the start. For example, man sees a change in the Old and New Testaments, but God planned those changes from the beginning, so they are not changes in the nature or wisdom of God at all. So the first set of scriptures offered above by the skeptic does not contradict the next set at all.

When God "repents" or changes His mind, it is usually with regard to what He intended to do toward a certain people. The times when God changed His intentions were when the people changed their intentions after being warned of God's coming wrath. God did not change when He destroyed the earth with a flood. Man changed so much that God grieved. When Nineveh was warned of God’s intention to destroy them, they changed, and on the basis of their repentance, it would be said that God changed His intentions against them. Thus, it was not a real change in God Himself, but a change of intent that was conditional to start with.

There are figures of speech for emphasis. One figure of speech is called hyperbole, in which a matter is exaggerated for emphasis. If God had literally been sorry He made man on the earth, He would have simply taken Noah home to glory and destroyed the rest. Why start it up again if you are literally sorry You made man? Look for hyperbole in any kind of literature. When we read that a person "laughed himself to death", we must make allowance that the expression was likely a hyperbole of emphasis.

God's great merciful heart ached and grieved over the condition of man and the need to destroy the creation for another phase. It"repented" the Lord means that it "changed" His delight in His creation into sorrow. From "it is good" to "it is not good". This is not a change in the nature or will of God, but a change in outlook due to man's behavior. Again, this is not a contradiction in the Bible, but two different contexts of two different matters.