Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
Genesis 6:6
It repented the LORD. A verb that means comfort, grieve, relent and change course, all at once.
Genesis 6:6, in every translation this tool compares.
He was sorry. Sorry about what happened, or sorry enough to undo it? English splits those into regret and relent. One Hebrew word covers both, and the sentence has to tell you which, and sometimes it does not.
Because the verse is the standard proof text on both sides of the argument about whether God changes, and the verb is the only thing in it under dispute. The same verb turns up in 1 Samuel 15 twice in one chapter pointing opposite directions, which means anyone arguing from it in English is arguing from a translator's choice.
And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
Modern versions read regretted, was sorry, or was grieved. Repented has dropped out because English repentance now means turning from sin, which is not what the verb says.
נָחַם nacham · H5162
Nacham covers a range that English splits across several words: to be moved to pity, to console oneself, to grieve, and to change a stated course of action. It is used of God relenting from announced judgment and also of human comfort after a death.
No English verb covers grief and reversal in the same breath. Translators have to pick the shade the context supports, and the shade they pick becomes the theology the reader inherits.
When a modern version has quietly replaced a King James word, the usual reason is that the English word moved, not that the Hebrew is in doubt. Check the old word's older meaning before assuming a translation agenda.
Regretted reads the verb as emotion. Relented reads it as a change of course. The verse supplies both in its two halves, and the second half, it grieved him at his heart, is what makes the emotional reading hard to strip out.
- The same verb at 1 Samuel 15:11 and 15:29, in the same chapter, in apparently opposite directions
- Nacham in the sense of comfort: Genesis 37:35; Isaiah 40:1
