God plots evil, but repents?

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AlanFromWichita

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When I was choosing the hymns for today’s Mass, I noticed a couple things that seemed very strange on the surface. I have concocted rationale for them but I’m curious to hear others’ thoughts before putting them out there in case others know the “right” answer.

In the first reading for this weekend Mass (3rd Sunday O.T.) we have God apparently planning to (or at least threatening to) do evil, then repents.
Jon 3:1-5:
Reading I
Jon 3:1-5, 10

The word of the LORD came to Jonah, saying:
“Set out for the great city of Nineveh,
and announce to it the message that I will tell you.”
So Jonah made ready and went to Nineveh,
according to the LORD’s bidding.
Now Nineveh was an enormously large city;
it took three days to go through it.
Jonah began his journey through the city,
and had gone but a single day’s walk announcing,
“Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed,”
when the people of Nineveh believed God;
they proclaimed a fast
and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth.

When God saw by their actions how they turned from their evil way,
he repented of the evil that he had threatened to do to them;
he did not carry it out.
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Does this mean God can do evil? How is it that God “repented?” Doesn’t “repent” imply “change?” Did God know when He made the threat that Ninevah would do alms and so the threat was possibly an idle one or at least a conditional one when the reading didn’t sound like it?

I’m not trying to cause trouble or pick a fight, but just to invite some discussion on some issues that I find very subtle and even a bit confusing.

Alan

edit >> one thing I did notice is that is never said God actually “intended” to destroy the city. He only instructed Jonah to tell them about the impending destruction. Is that even relevant?
 
Here are scriptures that I think may contribute to the discussion you are seeking.From Ecclesiastes:

“Consider the work of God. Who can make straight what he has made crooked? 14 On a good day enjoy good things, and on an evil day consider: Both the one and the other God has made, so that man cannot find fault with him in anything.” And from Deuteronomy:

"Learn then that I, I alone, am God, and there is no god besides me. It is I who bring both death and life, I who inflict wounds and heal them, and from my hand there is no rescue. "
The word “evil” has been and is used to mean misfortune, suffering, any and all those things that most of us would just as soon do without. God has sent such “evil” to most of us at one time or another. He sent a big chunk of it to His Son.

One meaning of the word “repent” means to simply turn around or reverse direction. It doesn’t necessarily have to imply guilt of any kind but simply a decision to change direction.

Jesus defines Satan for us in very specific terms in John’s gospel where he calls Satan “A liar and the Father of lies”
This is one thing God doesn’t do. Lie that is. I would suggest that perhaps it is the one thing God can’t do. Whenever God says something, if it wasn’t true before, then it will be after God says it. Sort of an operational definition of truth.

Anyway just a few thoughts.

peace

-Jim
 
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trogiah:
Anyway just a few thoughts.

peace

-Jim
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Thank you. It seems like the term “evil” is expansive enough to mean things that men don’t like but aren’t necessarily inherently evil … given the Eccl. you quoted.

Since the verse never directly says he will harm Ninevah, now I’m thinking that the “threat” to do so wasn’t so much an idle threat, but a necessary one that He would know in advance was going to work, but somehow needed to actually be conveyed by Jonah. From their reaction it would seem to be just what they needed at the time. 🙂

Alan
 
In the ancient Semitic idiom common to the Hebrew Scriptures, “evil” can be regarded merely as any experience which we humans regard as unpleasant, painful, etc. In this sense - and only in this sense, God can be considered the “author of evil”.
 
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tjmiller:
In the ancient Semitic idiom common to the Hebrew Scriptures, “evil” can be regarded merely as any experience which we humans regard as unpleasant, painful, etc. In this sense - and only in this sense, God can be considered the “author of evil”.
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This is kind of what I was getting at.

This was not to disrespect God, but to realize that some of the cliche’s we like to pass around are not, in fact, absolute statements. When we regard them as such, it makes it very difficult to have a fruitful discussion because we are all inside tiny rhetorical cages these cliches have built for us, which IMO limit or distort the growth that could be made if we didn’t have these emotional obstacles to discussion.

That’s why I started this thread with the “embarrassed face” in the first place – as a sort of a protection against people seeing a provocative title and getting all motivated to come in here and clobber me. The provocative title itself was not a trick but a reflection of how strangely it hit me personally to read the story.

Thank you folks for rising above my fears and giving me answers that I consider meaningful. 🙂

Alan
 
While “repent” is most commonly thought of as turning from sin and changing one’s way of life…it also can mean to simply change one’s mind, which would certainly be God’s prerogative. Check out the definition of the word here.

m-w.com/dictionary/repent
 
Thanks for asking this question. And answering it. I was disturbed by it as well.
 
As Pure Act and Self-Subsistent Being, God is immutable, and cannot “change His mind”. When we read in Scripture of God “repenting”, it simply means that He altered a course of action.
 
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blessedtoo:
Thanks for asking this question. And answering it. I was disturbed by it as well.
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As was I. Although I am not sure the God authoring evil part has been adaquetly answered as yet. I look forward to more dialogue.
 
First, one must come to a definition of terms.

Exactly what is meant by “evil”?
 
Its important to note that ancient Hebrew was a language very lacking in nouns. Nouns almost always did double, triple, quadruple, quintuple, and so forth duty. This is one such case. The word is here translated “evil” in english, however if we look into the Hebrew, we see what is really going on.

The Hebrew word here is rah, which was used to express all of the following:

bad, evil, adversity, affliction, calamity, distress, harm, misery, sorrow, etc.
 
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Lazerlike42:
Its important to note that ancient Hebrew was a language very lacking in nouns. Nouns almost always did double, triple, quadruple, quintuple, and so forth duty. This is one such case. The word is here translated “evil” in english, however if we look into the Hebrew, we see what is really going on.

The Hebrew word here is rah, which was used to express all of the following:

bad, evil, adversity, affliction, calamity, distress, harm, misery, sorrow, etc.
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Thank you.
However I do wonder why of all these to chose from, evil, was the choice translated word. One would think it would have been more appropriately selected considering the options.
 
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Mijoy2:
Thank you.
However I do wonder why of all these to chose from, evil, was the choice translated word. One would think it would have been more appropriately selected considering the options.
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It was probably first translated this way during the time of the King James translation and the Douay Rheims translation, and simply stuck. A number of words meant thigs quite different from what they do today. For instance, the word “conversation,” which today means two people talking, reffered to a person’s behavior during the time of King James. I do not know if it did, however it is possible that the word evil also had different connotations or meaning at the time. You’ll find a lot of translations where a less than perfect word is used simply because it became the “traditional” translation and everybody expected it to be that way, so modern translators kept it that way.
 
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Lazerlike42:
It was probably first translated this way during the time of the King James translation and the Douay Rheims translation, and simply stuck. A number of words meant thigs quite different from what they do today. For instance, the word “conversation,” which today means two people talking, reffered to a person’s behavior during the time of King James. I do not know if it did, however it is possible that the word evil also had different connotations or meaning at the time. You’ll find a lot of translations where a less than perfect word is used simply because it became the “traditional” translation and everybody expected it to be that way, so modern translators kept it that way.
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Thank you for the background information. 👍

The unsettling thing about all this is it tends to throw a big margin of error on anything we hear. Now that the Mass is in the vernacular and all, people are likely to “hear” all kinds of things out of context.

Alan
 
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