Good Morning Yamon Ki Yesepar and Nevim Arith Hayomim:
Genesis 6:6: “And it repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart.”
Numbers 23:19: “God is not a man that He should lie, nor the son of a man that he should repent.”
I find two types of people in the world. Those who say the Bible is full of contradictions but can’t name one and those who say there are no contradictions but when faced with one can not explain it, other than it is a “mystery of God.”
In reviewing various commentaries I find commentators really scampering for an explanation of the above seeming contradiction. In Genesis we find God “repents” but in Numbers we find that God can not repent. Some will say the Genesis passage is only using a natural means to explain God’s situation which, being God, makes it impossible for us to fully understand. Yeah, I am with you on that one. Others just jump off into some spiritual twilight zone and mask their lack of understanding with high fluent “religious talk.” You know stuff like: “This is an anthropomorphic illustration of divine empiricism.” We had an old saying when I was a seminary student: “If you can’t convince em’ confuse em’”
Yet, all the commentaries I looked at are based on Western scientific presuppositions. One such presupposition if that the majority of Christian scholars accept the Hebrew word “nachach” to mean repent. Our modern understanding of repentance carries the idea of regret, admission of a wrong and a desire to change. This thought is set in stone and if you render “nachach” as repentance in Genesis 6:6 you must render it as repentance or other such like word in Numbers 23:19 and bingo you’ve got yourself a contradiction basing your translation work on Western philosophical, scientific thought.
I used to always remind my students to think like a Hebrew, not an engineer for General Electric. If you apply the scientific method to your study of the Word of God you will come up with endless contradictions. If you think like a Hebrew you will look at these two verses and say: “Oh mercy Maude, this is a contradiction, the experts in translation must be wrong.” The experts look at renderings that have been accepted as true throughout the ages. They look at the creditability of those who say it should be thus, and they apply the consensus of their denominations and institutions.
Since I am no longer in the ministry or teaching, I am beholden to no institution nor denomination. I do question the judgment of many of our Church Fathers who were openly Anti-Semitic and refused to recognize the impute or existence of Church Mothers and just because something has been recognized as truth for 1500 years does not make a truth. One example is that for over 1500 years Christians scholars not only denied the existence of a prophetic perfect in the Hebrew, they mocked and laughed at the idea. Well, the Dead Sea Scrolls put an end to that I will have you. Thus, I will say what no teacher in an evangelical school would dare say. Once more I ask that you join me and rise up and declare: “Who says you should render ’nachach” as repent?” You want Numbers 23:19 to be rendered as repentance, fine and dandy but let’s pick out another word for “Nachach” in Genesis 6:6.
The word “Nachach” has it origins in the process of making pottery. Have you ever watched a potter at work on the National Geographic channel? I mean watch a truly artistic potter. This old boy never accepts his first product. He puts the clay on the wheel and while the wheel spins he fashions his vessel. Now you will notice the potter will fashion a beautiful and adequate vessel. But if it is not quite the way the potter wants it, he will smash it down and start over, sometimes he is just smashing it down to make the clay more pliable. He may fashion a number of vessels and smash them down before he has a vessel that is exactly the way he wants it. After all, it is his clay and his vessel, and although all the other vessels will perform it’s intended task, the potter has his own idea as to what his own personal vessel will be like. This decision to smash the vessel and start over again is “nachach.”
When the potter smashes the vessel to reform it, that is no indication that the potter regrets having made the vessel nor that he was upset with the vessel. It is only that the vessel did not meet his high standards. It could be through no fault of the potter. His potter’s wheel might be a bit off balance or spinning too fast or too slow, or more likely the clay had some impurities that had to be purged. Thus, “nachach” can have a much different meaning that our present understanding of repentance.
What we have is a picture of God as a potter fashioning man into the perfect vessel. But man’s free will may throw the spinning wheel a bit off balance or change it’s speed, or we may pick up certain impurities. God doesn’t repent fashioning us, He only says: “Oops, so act of the will or some impurity has entered, let’s purge it and start over.”
The last phrase in this verse in Genesis, however, moves the illustration to a higher level than just a potter forming a vessel, it shows the potter having a relationship with that vessel and doing all he can to perfect it before smashing it down and starting over. That last phrase says: “It grieved His heart.”
The Mona Lisa was Leonardo De Vinci’s masterpiece. He spent a lifetime painting it. He was constantly reworking bits and pieces of it. He would sometimes stare at if for hours and then make a slight alteration to a certain brush stroke. It was his masterpiece. He cherished it, nurtured it into existence and spent a lifetime perfecting it, making it just the way he wanted. Can you imagine what De Vinci would have felt if he returned to his studio one day and found some vandal had entered and splashed paint over his Mona Lisa. That would surely have “grieved his heart.” The word “grieve” is “’atsab” which means to travail. When God saw the failure of His people to be what He created them to be, when He saw an enemy come in and vandalize his masterpiece that he labored so in perfecting, His heart began to travail.
So there you are, his little masterpiece. He sent his Son to die for you, to save you from your sins and remove all your impurities. He then puts you on his potter wheel and begins to fashion you. Sometimes he has to smash you and start over, but each time, like clay, you become more pliable. Then along comes the enemy holding out some lustful enticement and you snatch it and ruin God’s masterpiece. How, the heart of God must ache.
Oh, one more thing. That word “grieve” is in a Hithpael form. That means that God allows himself to grieve or travail over you. He doesn’t have to have a broken heart but he loves you so much that he will allow himself to suffer the pain of a broken heart over your failure. It is one thing for a child to rebel against his parent and regret his act of rebellion. But it is not until that child realizes he has broken his parents heart that he will truly repent.
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