In Amos 7:1-6 we read the following:
This is what the Lord God showed me: he was forming locusts at the time the latter growth began to sprout (it was the latter growth after the king's mowings). When they had finished eating the grass of the land, I said, "O Lord God, forgive me, I beg you! How can Jacob stand? He is so small!" The Lord relented concerning this, "It shall not be," said the Lord. That is what the Lord God showed me: the Lord God was calling for a shower of fire, and it devoured the great deep and was eating up the land. Then I said, "O Lord God, cease, I beg you! How can Jacob stand? He is so small!" Then the Lord relented concerning this, "This also shall not be," said the Lord God. (NRSV)
In this passage, God is said to have relented (alt. change his mind [Hebrew: נחם Greek: μετανοέω]) from punishing Israel due to the intercession of Amos (cf. Exo 32-33 for a similar event where, based on Moses’ intercession, God relents from His promise to destroy the Israelites due to their idolatry). The plain meaning of this passage is that God changed His mind and did not engage in play-acting nor can this be relegated to a mere anthropomorphism. As one recent author on God’s contingent foreknowledge wrote:
First, not only did the Lord change his mind, but he affirmed his intention by verbalizing it (e.g., “’This shall not be’ said the Lord”). Hence, if one attempts to fictionalize this event, one must also fictionalize Amos’ recording of God’s own words, which, as the saying goes, means that Amos put words into the mouth of God that God did not actually say.
Second, the narrative gives us two contrasting actions of God in a cause-and-effect relationship: (1) God has already formed the locusts to destroy the vegetation, and (2) God stops the forming of the locusts and does not destroy the vegetation. Hence, if an exegete were to claim that God’s verbalized decision that occurs in between the cause-and-effect sequence of event #1 and event #2 is fictional (i.e., the statement “’This shall not be’ said the Lord” did not occur), it essentially requires that the whole narrative becomes fiction. In other words, the Lord’s changing of mind is an integral part of the natural sequence of events in the historical narrative, without which the Lord’s initial forming of the locusts to eat the vegetation and Amos’ plea to stop the forming would be superfluous or causes without effects. (Robert Sungenis, The Immutable God Who Can Change His Mind, The Impassable God Who Can Show Emotion [State Line, Pa.: Catholic Apologetics International Publishing, Inc., 2016], 37-8)
