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No.21.
The Preservation of the Seed of Noah.
pp. 111 - 113
In direct contrast with the prevailing corruption, the patriarch Noah stands out in the
record of Gen. 6: as a notable exception.
"But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord" (Gen. 6: 8).
The wickedness of man was so great in the earth and every imagination of the
thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, that we read the extraordinary statement
"and it repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at
His heart" (Gen. 6: 6). This word `repented' challenges us. In what way can God be
said to repent? This is not the only occasion when repentance is predicated of the Lord.
At the intercession of Moses, the Lord repented of the evil which He had thought to do
unto His people (Exod. 32: 14) and this repentance is repeated in the days of David
(II Sam. 24: 16) and is commemorated in Psa. 106: 45. It was the complaint of Jonah
that he knew full well that God being merciful would repent if only Nineveh would turn
to Him (Jonah 3: 9, 10; 4: 2). These gracious repentings we can perhaps understand,
but it is strange to read that the Lord repented that he had made man.
In the first place we may say that `repenting' and `being grieved at the heart' are
instances of the figure of speech known as Anthropopatheia a figure which ascribes
human attributes to God. The Hebrews called this mode of speech Derek Benai Adam,
the way of the sons of man, or Paul says, who was himself a Hebrew, `I speak after the
manner of men', and without such condescension on the part of God man could never
apprehend His revelation. But conceding all this, admitting that the use of such parts of
the body as face, nostrils, eyes, ears and hands are accommodations to our limitations, we
nevertheless believe that they stand for realities, even though we can affix to such
spiritual realities no human name. In like manner, while we may not take the words
grief, anger, jealousy and other similar affections and feelings at their surface value, we
nevertheless know that they stand for something equivalent on this high plane of Divine
experience.
Consequently we are to gather from Gen. 6: 6, that something of extreme antipathy
to the purpose of God at creation had come in and spoiled the work of God's hands,
grieved His heart, and made Him repent that He had made man. In the language of the
parable the reason is found in the fact `that an enemy hath done this'. Throughout the
Bible we have the consequences of a conflict, a conflict between good and evil, darkness
and light, God and Satan, and that the Bible is intensely real, making demands upon the
wisdom and power of the Almighty and culminating in the sparing not of His Beloved
Son. If such inroads had been made into the nature of mankind by the evil one that it
could be said `that all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth', then God must act and
act drastically if the situation were to be saved.