In Exodus 32, did Moses change God’s mind? God is omniscient so how could He be persuaded from His plan?
Discussion
22 comments
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What Hebrews 32 or Hebrew 3:2?
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You mean Exodus? Or Genesis 18
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Hebrews 32!!
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Twice the Bible says that God repented for something he had done in the past (Genesis 6:6-7 and 1 Samuel 15:11), and at least eleven times it says he repented or would repent of something he was about to do in the future (Exodus 32:12-14; 2 Samuel 24:16; 1 Chronicles 21:15; Psalm 106:45; Jeremiah 4:28; 18:8; 26:3, 13, 19; 42:10; Joel 2:13-14; Amos 7:3, 6; Jonah 3:9-10; 4:2).
Nevertheless, the Bible also says that God will not repent. For example, Psalm 110:4 says,
The Lord has sworn; he will not repent: “You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.”
And Ezekiel 24:14 says,
I, the Lord, have spoken; it shall come to pass, I will do it, I will not go back, I will not spare, I will not repent; according to your ways and your doings I will judge you, says the Lord God.” (See Jeremiah 4:27-28.)
But even more important than these are the texts that say God would be like a man if he repented. In other words, God’s freedom from a need to repent is based on his deity. Being God means that he cannot repent.
Numbers 23:19 — God is not a man that he should lie, or a son of man that he should repent.
1 Samuel 15:29 — The Glory of Israel will not lie or repent; for he is not a man, that he should repent.
This last text comes in the very same story where it says God repented that he had made Saul king (1 Samuel 15:11, 35). So we must not think that these two views come from different authors of the Old Testament who disagree with each other.
Rather, we should probably say that there is a sense in which God does repent, and there is a sense in which he does not. First Samuel 15:29 and Numbers 23:19 are intended to keep us from seeing the repentance of God in a way that would put him in the limited category of a man.
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There is more than one way to solve a math problem and more than one way to skin a cat.
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There is no heb 32
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Anthropomorphic language is used to convey God’s dealings with us. To help us understand.
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Hezekiah changed God’s mind
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i read it before, its under the doctrine of revealed will and secret will of God. try to search that topic
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The anthropomorphism of the Hebrew mind diluted by a simplistic English.
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There is different kinds of repentance.
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No God was testing him in his prayer life God knew all along what he wud do
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I believe God cane have more than one option to achieve His plans
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Why couldn’t God allow there to be more than one way to accomplish His will?
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If God does not change his mind about anything, then Jonah prophesied a lie about Nineveh being destroyed.
The senses are different. God creates scenarios in which the outcome relies on a man. This is to immediately hazard the possibility of a regret, or our moral free will does not exist. -
God’s Plan for Time and Eternity is immutable but the process by which that Plan comes to fruition is fluid; in other words, God infuses His created beings, both angelic and human, with free will in order that love and relationship with Him can manifest in purity and authenticity but God, in His omnipotence, is perfectly capable of working around and through our personal decisions to accomplish His perfect will.
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To the op. How many of the children of Israel that God was upset with made it into the promised land?
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First learn how scripture guides you.
What many consider to be contradictions and inconsistancies are in fact misunderstood guides.
Which means many people never bother to learn the Jewish perspective of scripture. -
God changed His mind a few times in the Bible.
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God only says in a sense that Moses can witness and write down for his testimony to convey. If God speaks with a futuric sense then even Moses understood but not those Jews later for such a piece of message to convey till today. If you explain quantum physics to Moses and even when he manages to understand, the piece of truth won‘t go through the Jews till today as humans can‘t carry forward a theory which they don‘t understand. God rather speak in a sense very close to His intention, which can be understood by Moses and later Jews such that related info can convey.
What God said actually means He reserves the right to teminate choosing Israel as His witness but rather destroys it to choose another ethnicity. This is just another threatening to warn the Jews. This warning conveyed by Moses has a long term effect on the Jews. This possibly contributes to the fact that the Jews remain the only ethnic group keeping its own religion and customs while scattered in an exile of 2000 years without their own homeland. -
It is a language/translation issue. ‘Repent’ in common usage is suggestive of something only a sinner could do. There is no suggestion that God is a sinner and therefore no reason to use that interpretation. Something ELSE must be meant.
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