closely, and gets involved with, humanity. Nacham gives the reader the correct impression that God is not
static, plastic, both indifferent to and unaffected by, the thoughts, words, and actions of His creatures.
Rather, He is a dynamic, living Being, who has a personality, and who, to use more anthropopathic/
-morphic language, is concerned with, affected by, and reacting to, how people live their lives.
Because of the preceding context, Genesis 6:1-5, and as a parallel to the second half of v. 6 - "He
was pained to His heart" this paper suggests translating nacham as "He was grieved," or "He suffered
grief." Such a rendering fits the context and avoids the pitfalls associated with the phrases "He repented,"
or "He regretted," or "He was sorry that." Other verses where nacham in the niphal, used with reference to
God, can mean "He was grieved," or "He suffered grief," are 1 Samuel 15:11, where Yahweh says, "I am
grieved that I made Saul king"; 1 Samuel 15:35, which reads essentially the same way; 2 Samuel 24:16,
which relates how Yahweh was grieved concerning a pestilence He had sent upon Israel; 1 Chronicles
21:15, similar to the preceding verse; Jeremiah 42:10, where Yahweh suffers grief/is grieved concerning
the disaster/harm which He has done; and Genesis 6:7, a partial parallel to verse 6. A related New
Testament verse is Ephesians 4:30 " And do not grieve [lupeo, pres. act. impv., "to cause sorrow, to
grieve"] the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption [NIV]."
19
Intertwined
in
nacham
in Genesis 6:6 are the dual aspects of feeling/emotion and
purpose/decision. When God created the world, everything was very good. The first human beings were
holy, perfectly in the image of God. They were made personally by Yahweh (God's personal, covenant
name appears in Genesis 2), to be in fellowship with Him, and to love and serve Him, and so it was. But
then came the fall into sin, and eventually the spread of unbelief in the human race, which culminates with
the scene portrayed in Genesis 6:5 "The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become,
and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time [NIV]." This is the reality
in Noah's day, compared to what could have been! Because He had made man, then, Yahweh, who had
once been in intimate fellowship with man, suffered grief. His creatures, who had mutated in such a
terrible way, caused Him to feel not joy, but sadness.
19
A possible translation of nacham, niphal, in Judges 21:6 and 15 is that the Israelites "were grieved" or
"suffered grief" in regard to, or concerning, the tribe of Benjamin. Cf. H. Van Dyke Parunak, "A Semantic
Survey of NHM [nchm]," Biblica 56 (1975), pp. 519, 526-527.