The flood of evil that has filled the world as described in Genesis 6:1-5 leads to this striking emotional response of the Lord in Genesis 6:6:
“And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.” (ESV)
In the King James Version the first clause of that verse is translated this way:
“And it repented the LORD…“
Likewise in the New American Standard Bible it is translated this way:
“The LORD was sorry…“
The heart of what Moses seems to be communicating to us with these words is that the sin was so great that it made God so sorry he had made man. Likewise, the heart of man was greatly wicked and it brought great grief to the heart of God.
This passage offers us something of a theological riddle and puzzle in that on the surface of this passage it sounds like God is shocked and surprised by how bad things turned out and has decided to call an audible at the line of scrimmage. If such is the case this would call into question God’s omniscience and sovereignty.
In dealing with a theological puzzle such as this, there are two vital Old Testament texts that you need to keep in mind.
One is found in Numbers 23:19:
“God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind.”
Another is found in 1 Samuel 15:29:
“the Glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for he is not a man, that he should have regret.””
These verses are placed as theological guardrails in the Bible so that when we drive through passages like Genesis 6:6, we don’t veer off into the false conclusion that there is impotence and ignorance in God.
But that still leaves us with this question: What are we to make of this language?
To answer that question I can do no better than share with you these very helpful words from John Calvin:
“Because it could not otherwise be known how great is God’s hatred and detest of sin, therefore God accommodates himself to our capacity (as a Father stooping down to lisp to his infant child). God clothes himself with our affections, in order to more effectively pierce our hearts with the gravity of sin.”[1]
In other words, by putting on our emotions God is teaching us how we should feel about and view sin. This act of accommodation on God’s part leads us to ask some very heart probing questions:
Do God’s emotions, as it were, toward sin, reflect yours?
Are you growing in holiness in your affections by learning to be grieved like God?
Or have you become so desensitized to sin that you merely shrug your shoulders at it, or worse, find it quite entertaining?
Also, by putting on our emotions God is teaching us how we should respond to our own sin.
Genesis 6:6 is a wonderful example of what repentance looks like. Ironically, God, who has no sin and so need not repent, is the one doing the repenting.
Repentance is when we bring the darkness of our sin under the light of God’s holiness and see it for what it really is. Then with grief and hatred for our sin we seek to turn from it to God in renewed obedience.
This is what we learn from our “grieving” God.
[1] John Calvin, Commentary on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis (vol. 1; Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 249. (I have slightly paraphrased and updated some of the English).