Genesis
6:6 ¶ And it repented the LORD that he
had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. 7 And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I
have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping
thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.
What
does the idiomatic expression, it
repented the Lord, mean?
Judges
2:18 And when the LORD raised them up
judges, then the LORD was with the judge, and delivered them out of the hand of
their enemies all the days of the judge: for it repented the LORD because of their groanings by reason of them
that oppressed them and vexed them.
Something is
presented to God that, by His very nature, He will not ignore, even though He
knew, by virtue of His omniscience, that it would happen. The wickedness of
mankind grieved God at His heart and
demanded a certain path which He had prepared in His foreknowledge. Because the
expression, it repented the Lord, like
most idiomatic expressions, has a meaning that goes beyond simply the
definitions of the individual words strung together it requires us to use our
reasoning ability, something we do not like to do when someone is willing to
spoonfeed us their own careless reading.
By the context the
creation of mankind repented the Lord because
it grieved Him at His heart and His
purpose is to erase the life He created, not just man, because it repented Him.
The word repent clearly in other contexts in the
Bible means to turn from something or to change one’s mind about something.
Here, as part of this expression it means more than that. By viewing this
context we see that the Lord was grieved by mankind’s wickedness as the
definition of how the Lord was repented by something. The Lord did not repent or change His mind or turn from
something He planned. Something repented Him
with the Lord being the object of the phrase and not the subject, as mankind’s
wickedness caused Him to grieve. We all understand this. We have known
something sickening was coming in our minds but still were sickened by it when
it came to pass and we required ourselves to go to the next action. I know my
child is going to fall down but he must learn. Still, it anguishes me when it
happens. I know I must grow old and weak, if I am to live, but it is not an
easy thing to experience. Man has disappointed God, but He knew He would. It
doesn’t make the experience any more comfortable. From before the foundation of
the world God knew He would come to live in a body and be tortured and murdered
on the cross at Calvary but that foreknowledge didn’t make it any more
pleasant.
Ephesians
1:4 According as he hath chosen us in
him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without
blame before him in love:
Luke
22:44 And being in an agony he prayed
more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down
to the ground.
We must understand
that God is not a disinterested bystander to our affairs. He dearly loves His
creation and loved all mankind, even the most wicked, at the cross of Calvary.
What we do affects Him profoundly. If it were not so He would not have let us so
much as touch Him.
Man’s wickedness
disgusted God and, in His disgust and grief, man and the animal life, which God
had created and which mankind’s sin had corrupted, must be eliminated. The next
word, though, one of the most important words in the Bible, has great implications
for God coming to earth in the form of a man to deliver us from eternal loss
and suffering. That word that follows is But……
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