Genesis 6:6 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

It repented the Lord—it grieved him at his heart— "All things past, present, and future, lie open at once to the view of the Divine Mind," says Dr. Clarke; and therefore that he is immutable in his counsels, and cannot repent, is one of the plainest dictates both of natural and revealed religion, Numbers 23:19. 1 Samuel 15:29. For he is not a man, that he should repent. So that the expressions of God's repenting, grieving, and the like, are only figurative, and adapted to our apprehensions; signifying, not any change in God himself, but only a difference of event with regard to us. Thus good parents, without any change in themselves, encourage or discourage their respective children, according as they change their behaviour for the better or the worse. Thus laws themselves, which can have no affection, and consequently no change of affection towards one person or another, yet vary their effect, themselves remaining unvaried. So when it is here said, God repented, was grieved, &c. the meaning is, that he was resolved to alter his conduct; and, as men, when they repent of any thing, are sorry for it, and endeavour to undo it, so was the Almighty determined to destroy man whom he had created, and whose change from good to evil brought on these consequences from a God continuing ever the same. We must remember, that it is by way of analogy, or comparison only, that the nature and passions of men are ascribed to God.