Can God Have Regret?

If God is unchanging, how can he change his mind? How can he grieve and have regret? Does he not know everything?

This past Sunday, our sermon text was 1 Samuel 15:10–35. I decided that the topic of “Self-Deception” was the best focus of the sermon, but that left one important question unaddressed. In verse 11, God says, “I regret that I have made Saul king.” A couple people asked me after the sermon, “How is that possible? I thought God doesn’t change.”

In fact, this passage seems to have two verses in direct contradiction with each other:

The word of the Lord came to Samuel: “I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments.” (1 Sam 15:10–11)

“And also the Glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for he is not a man, that he should have regret.” (1 Sam 15:29)

Can God have regret or not? These verses raise the question of God’s unchangeability. If God is unchanging, how can he change his mind? How can he grieve and have regret? Does he not know everything? Has he not planned everything that will happen perfectly according to his purposes? 

Always Willing to Change

The Hebrew word here for “regret” is naham, and it is the same word used in the Genesis 6 before the flood: 

The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. (Gen 6:5–6)

As we look at the Bible’s broader use of this word, we find the problem solved in this way: part of God’s unchanging nature is that he relents. That is, God is unchangingly willing to change his mind.  In fact, the prophet Joel tells us, 

Return to the Lord your God, 

      for he is gracious and merciful, 

slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; 

      and he relents over disaster.” (Joel 2:13)

The Hebrew word for “relent” here is, again, naham. As John Frame has put it, “Relenting is part of his very nature as the Lord. He is the Lord who relents” (The Doctrine of God, p. 562). In fact, it is a regular theme in the Bible when a leader of God’s people—whether Abraham, Moses, or even the Ninevites in the Book of Jonah—plead with God to change his mind and not judge, amazingly, the Almighty is incredibly willing to do so. This is explained by the prophet Jeremiah this way:

Then the word of the Lord came to me: “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the Lord. Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.  If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it,  and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it.  And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it,  and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it. (Jeremiah 18:5–10)

The Good News That God Changes His Mind

Are we not all so glad this is the case? We were once God’s enemies, and now we are his beloved children. We all have sins in our lives that we know deserve God’s anger and punishment. Are we not immensely grateful that he relents of his anger? 

But there are two sides to that coin. The Lord also says that when his people become proud or evil or hard-hearted, even if their parents or forebearers were humble and faithful, his judgment may turn on them. This is actually not an unpredictable, erratic god—this is a consistency of character that we would expect from the God who is unchanging.

The God of the Bible exists in paradox. He is three in one. He is a God of love and a God of wrath. He is the sovereign Lord and the giver of freedom. He punishes all sins and forgives all sins as well. And so here, he is the unchanging God who regularly changes his mind in showing grace to his beloved people. And as in all these paradoxes, they are ultimately and only resolved in the person of Jesus. In Jesus we see God welcoming sinners and judging the religious. Jesus is the God who relents.