Commenting on texts that speak of God not
changing and texts which present God as having a justifiable change of mind,
Mark Elliot (professor of divinity and biblical criticism at the University of Glasgow)
noted the following:
Yet God does
repent, even if in a way unlike that of a human being (e.g. in Hosea
11:8-9; cf. Num. 23:19 and 1 Sam. 15:29). In a way similar to how God in Christ
“suffered impassibly” on the cross (as per Cyril of Alexandria) (Cyril of
Alexandria, Scholia on the Incarnation 35), God changes his mind yet
does not change. Commenting on 1 Samuel 15:29, Alter finds a clever way of
explanation: “What Samuel says here is that God will not change His mind about
changing His mind” (Alter, David Story, 92). Or as Fretheim puts it:
“Samuel bears witness to God’s ethical consistency” so as “to instill in the
reader’s mind the measure of ethical seriousness” (Fretheim, Exodus,
488, 492).
Part of
God’s changing his mind is tied to the nature of covenant. God repented after
the creation, at the opening of the flood narrative (Gen. 6:6); after the Sinai
covenant, in the golden calf narrative (Exod. 32:14); after the adoption of
kingship, at the end of the Saul narrative (1 Sam. 15:35). Even if God is
unchanging, the structure of the relationship between him and his people is
changeable, such being the nature of relationships, which are necessarily
complex through being (at least) bipartite. Whatever the composition of Israel
(and one could argue, as Paul does, that the covenants with Abraham are
predicated on a faith relationship), in the case of the Noachic covenant God
guarantees the perseverance of creation in some shape or form, for all
generations, for as long as these last. The gist of Genesis 9:8-17 is that God
has a covenant that is ultimately with the earth, even if it is mediated
through Noah as a sort of spokesperson.
In these
cases all leads to an arrangement of which, God promises, he will never repent.
“Covenant forever” is the phrase used in Exodus 31;16-17, “forever” on the
condition that certain sacrificial specifications are observed in sacred time
and space, and meaning “indefinitely” rather than “eternally.” In other
instances as well God promises not to repent. In Jeremiah 33:20-22 he links the
certainty of the covenant to that of day and night, comparing the certainty of
the Davidic dynasty to that of night and day’s mutual succession. And in Isaiah
54:9-10 the certainty of the promise to remnant Zion is compared favorably to
the certainty of creation remaining, even although one senses that it is in
some ways mutable, in other ways immutable.
This is
like the days of Noah to me:
Just as I swore that the waters of Noah
would never again go over the earth,
so I have sworn that I will not be angry with you
and will not rebuke you.
For the mountains may depart
and the hills be removed,
but my steadfast love shall not depart from you,
and my covenant of peace shall not be removed,
says the LORD, who has compassion on you.
God
learns as well as knows, and so he dwells in the plot as well as above it, not
least in the case of Abraham’s obedience (cf. “for now I know” [Gen. 22:12]).
Yet very often God is in the plot so as to fix it. As Elias Bickerman
put it, although sometimes people have the opportunity for repent and God then
will “change his mind” (so-called fata conditionalia, conditional doom),
at other times it will be a case of fata denunciativa (condemnatory
doom), as at Amos 1:2, 6, 9, 11, where the same verb, )ăšîb, is
used each time but with a different word for “punishment” (Bickerman, Four
Strange Books of the Old Testament, 31-34). In such cases there will be no
change of mind by God. In the case of Jonah, “herald of God’s wrath, Jonah
declared the immutable and inevitable fata denunciativa—the sinfulness
of Nineveh is described, as David Kimchi noted, in the same words as are used
in Genesis about Sodom” (Bickerman, Four Strange Books of the Old Testament,
32). Jonah was of course embarrassed, yet he was not wrong, for Nineveh would
indeed be destroyed, as Tobit saw occur, for with judgment comes with the
possibility of the postponement of severe decrees, as is patent in
Hezekiah’s story in Isaiah 38. It was Jeremiah who introduced the idea of
prophecy that announces God’s relenting, even where there is nothing more than
lament on the side of the people, supremely in Jeremiah 29, before it was taken
up in Ezekiel 38, and again by Joel (2:17), with its appeal to “pity,” and by
Malachi 3:6-12; 4:1-6. (Mark W. Elliott, Providence: A Biblical, Historical,
and Theological Account [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2020],
120-21)
Addressing 1 Sam 15:29 and related texts
and how they do not pose a problem for those who, like me, accept a form of
Open Theism (NB: Elliot is not an Open Theist), Elliot wrote the
following insightful commentary:
[I]n 1
Samuel 15, Saul gets rejected. “The verses [10, 29, 35] poses a theological
problem about the character of God, who does not change and yet who changes”
(Brueggemann, First and Second Samuel, 116). Brueggemann will not
resolve the aporia on either side, but prefers to let the tension (or mystery)
be. Yet God’s “repentance,” as Jörg Jeremias observed (Jeremias, De Reue
Gottes, 48-58), is not a primitive notion, nor does it indicate that God is
weak, but with theological reflection it shows how he is responsible to save
and that God can change his mind according to his self-control, as expressed to
the uttermost in Hosea 11:8-9, where God considers destroying his people but
recoils (v. 9: “I will not do [lō’ e’ĕśeh] the burning of my anger”),
possibly because a long period of suffering can be substituted for repentance.
Although God himself is said to have repented of crowning Saul (1 Sam.
15:10-11), and Saul then begs Samuel to help change YHWH’s mind, Saul is then
told, “also the Glory of Israel will not lie nor repent, for he is not a man, that he
should repent” (v. 29 AT) (at v. 35: נִחָ֔ם; LXX: μετεμεληθη). The Greek and 4QSama have “change
mind” for the first verb, while the Masoretic Text has “play false.” As Graeme
Auld puts it: “Both elements of MT’s distinctive text seem to belong together:
it is the ‘glory’ or ‘durability’ (whatever exactly nēṣaḥ means) of
Yahweh that would be impugned by any expression of deceit or falsehood. The
point that Samuel makes, according to 4QSama and GT, is more local,
which fits well into the argument of the whole dialogue: Yahweh may have
regretted the original mistake over making Saul king but will neither turn from
nor regret his decision to remove the kingship from this failed king” (Auld, I
& II Samuel, 179). It is not simply that although God might repent he
will not deceive (the MT’s way of trying to harmonize the two
statements), but that he will simply not change a judgment other than on the
basis of facts. The analogy of a retrial for new evidence comes to mind: there
is to be no appeal on the basis of “law.” Even if 1 Samuel 15:29 (“does not
change his mind”) is just Samuel’s view of the matter, nevertheless the views
expressed there and in verse 35 (“regret”) are equally true (Bar-Efrat, Erste
Buch Samuel, 213). One might compare with the Masoretic Text of Numbers
23:19, with its parallel of deceit and regret, which denies that God can ever
be not true to his word. One might say that when Yahweh regrets, it is not as a
human, even to the point that he can regret a past decision and change
his approach thenceforth, but will not change his mind once he knows the human
heart is not inclined to turn. (Ibid., 127-28)
Further Reading
An
Examination and Critique of the Theological Presuppositions Underlying Reformed
Theology
