It repented God that he had made man
Read the full text in our reader
καὶ ἐνεθυμήθη ὁ θεὸς ὅτι ἐποίησεν τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, καὶ διενοήθη.
“And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart” (KJV) is the sentence English readers know — but the Greek verbs Swete’s Septuagint actually uses, ἐνεθυμήθη and διενοήθη, are gentler than that: both mean something closer to “he took it to heart, he thought it over, he deliberated” — verbs of reflection, not of visceral sorrow or regret. The underlying Hebrew is more emotionally exposed: וַיִּלָּחֶם (nacham, “to be sorry, to relent”) and וַיִּתְעַצֵּב (“was grieved to his heart”). Hellenistic Jewish translators, uneasy with a God who visibly changes his mind, appear to have softened the emotional Hebrew into a more philosophically composed Greek of “considering” — the same interpretive move Philo and later theology make explicit when they insist God’s “repentance” cannot mean literal regret.
Open The Septuagint 6.6 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the The Septuagint — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
The Septuagint 6.6 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/septuagint/6.6/