Does God Ever Change His Mind?

This question came up in Sunday school the other day. We were studying the passage in Exodus in which God says He is going to wipe out Israel and then Moses intercedes for them. Someone in the class wanted to make it clear that God never changes His mind.

I brought up the passage in Amos 7, in which it says twice that God changed His mind (vv. 3 and 6). The teacher said that a better translation of the Hebrew verb here would be "relent" (as in turned back from His wrath) rather than "changed His mind" as the NASB has it.

The Hebrew verb is "shuv"--which has a primary meaning of return. There may not be all that much of a difference between "relent" and "change His mind." If God relents, then He returns to a state of not planning on doing what He said He was about to do. In other words, He changes His mind.

Perhaps the problem is that when we human beings change our mind about something, it is because we get better information, or re-calculate what is best and realize we were in error, or decide to indulge a desire against our better judgment, or get struck by a whim, or something along these lines. Clearly this is not what happens when God relents or changes His mind.

Someone pointed out that in most or all of the cases in which God "returns" in this way, it is a decision to postpone or withhold judgment. This reminds me of the story in Froissart, in which the Queen pleads with King Edward III at Calais, that he would show mercy on the 6 nobleman and not execute them, as he was intending to do. The king relented. In another story from the reign of Richard II, King Richard's Queen pleads with the Duke of Gloucester, that he would show mercy on Simon Burleigh, and not execute him. In this case, the Duke is not willing to show mercy and Burleigh is executed.

In the case of Israel in the vision of Amos, or Sodom and Gomorrah or Israel in the time of Moses, the objects of God's wrath are fully worthy of the punishment that God intends to visit upon them, so relenting or changing His mind does not indicate any error on His part. But God delights in mercy and it appears that He is at least sometimes willing to be persuaded to postpone or temper or even withhold judgment when asked. So if God is willing to forgo doing something that is right in itself and perfectly in accordance with His character (execute justice) in order to do something else that is also right in itself and in accordance with His character (show mercy), then there is nothing troubling about this.

To go back to the example of Edward III and Calais, there is something beautiful about the Queen's pleading and the King's yielding that would not have happened if Edward had pardoned the noblemen without being asked. The same can be said of the times in which God yields to the pleading of a Moses or Abraham or Amos, so perhaps it is part of God's beauty that He is willing to change His mind.