Abstract:
This paper proposes to study the issue of the repentance of God in the Old Testament, since this affirms, at the same time, that God repents and doesn’t repent. The work is divided into three chapters. The first chapter seeks to semantically analyze the word nacham, and its meanings and use in the different biblical versions. From the information obtained in this first study, one can perceive the first theological implications about the repentance of God. We observed that nacham can mean “console”, as well as “have pity on”, “seek revenge” or “repent” depending on the biblical context in which it is used. The second chapter concentrates on the meaning of “repent”. It presents all the passages of the Old Testament which talk about the non-repentance of God. The third chapter presents the passages in which God repents. It is the repentance of God for something good already done and as a decision to go back on something planned for the future. This work concludes that the biblical text makes very different affirmations about the repentance of God.
