The Strength of Israel will not lie. — This title of the Eternal, here rendered “the Strength of Israel,” would be better rendered the Changeless One of Israel. The Hebrew word is first found in this passage. In later Hebrew, as in 1 Chronicles 29:2, it is rendered “glory,” from the Aramaean usage of speech (Keil). Some, less accurately, would translate it here “The Victory,” or “the Triumph of Israel,” will not lie, &c. In the eleventh verse of this chapter we read of the Eternal saying, “It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king,” while here we find how “the Changeless One (or Strength) of Israel will... not repent.” The truth is that with God there is no change. Now He approves of men and their works and days, and promises them rich blessings; now He condemns and punishes the ways and actions of the same men; hence He is said “to repent:” but the change springs alone from a change in the men themselves, not in God. Speaking in human language the Lord is said “to repent” because there was what appeared to be a change in the Eternal counsels.
“One instrument,” well says Dean Payne Smith, “may be laid aside, and another chosen (as was the case of Saul), because God ordains that the instruments by which He works shall be beings endowed with free will.” So God in the case of King Saul — in human language — was said to repent of His choice because, owing to Saul’s deliberate choice of evil, the Divine purposes could not in his case be carried out. Predictions and promises in the Scriptures are never absolute, but are always conditional. Still, God is ever the “Changeless One of Israel.” “The counsel of the Lord stands for ever” (Psalms 33:11). “I am Jehovah; I change not” (Malachi 3:6).