Genesis 6:6
And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
Does God know he'll regret making man - before he made man?
If he know he'll regret, why does he still made man?
If he don't know he'll regret, does that mean he is unintelligent?
(I might not be participate in this discussion, so please feel free to discuss/debate with other people here.)
Edit:
Definition of
Repent:
Feel or express sincere regret or remorse about one's wrongdoing or sin.
A modern translation of the Bible helps....archaic English is a lost language....too confusing.
God doesn't 'repent', but at times has reasons to 'regret' certain things. They are not the same.
Genesis 6:6
"Jehovah regretted that he had made men on the earth, and his heart was saddened."
The Jewish Tanach renders it in a similar way.
It wasn't the creation of man that God regretted but the fact that man's conduct had led him to such a low level of degradation in his short history.
There was demonic intervention that caused this moral decay in humans. This is what God regretted....that his free willed creatures would misuse this gift to the detriment of all.
God can know anything he wishes; being able to see into the future enables him to warn his people of what is to come....this becomes Bible prophesy.
The one thing that we see in scripture is that God *acted* only once and that is in the creation account in Genesis.
After he had given his intelligent creatures instruction on how to proceed, he then left their decisions up to them, hoping that they would choose to obey him because he had been so generous to them in his provisions for them. So all of his actions thereafter were *reactions* to what his creatures were doing. All the while he kept control of everything. When he needed to act to bring his purpose back on track he did so in response to their activity. (e.g. the flood of Noah's day)
But abuse of free will did not first take place with humans.....it first took place with an angel, who had been placed in a position of authority and responsibility in the garden of Eden. This angel wanted worship for himself and up until the creation of humans, he had no one who could see him as a god. He lied to woman, which in turn led the man to divide his loyalties between his God and his wife. His choice led them away from God and eventually a third of the angels followed satan as well....these also had free will. So now we had to armies at war....but only one could win. One side plays dirty...the other plays fair.
This is a battle for the hearts and minds of men.
So, in order to prove that the first rebels were in error, God allowed the whole scenario to play out naturally because he had foreseen the outcome and knew how to restore his first purpose for the earth and for his human creation.....and in the process, to create precedents for all time to come.
We are living in the greatest object lesson in human history. It has a foretold outcome and only those who retain their faith in God through the direction of his written word and the example and teachings of his son will survive its conclusion. We are heading for the showdown....and its going to be messy.
All this time God has been choosing the citizens for his everlasting Kingdom. By allowing us all to be caught in the act of being ourselves, God can see by our choices and attitudes whether we will be the kind of people who will make this world a better place, having learned all the lessons from the past....but we have to choose sides....decisively, of our own free will.
I personally think God's strategy is brilliant, because in this time period he not only gets to see us as we really are, but his judgments set precedents for all time to come, so that no human or angel will ever be able to challenge his sovereignty again. This ensures that life on earth will go back to what God purposed in the first place. A peaceful place for humans to live and enjoy his creations...forever.
'God knows from the beginning, the finale'.....(Isaiah 46:10) He tells us how to take the winning side. We either listen or ignore him.