Repent! For the Lord is at hand.

 

And the Lord regretted that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him to His heart.  --Genesis 6:6

A contronym is a word that has two meanings that are opposite or nearly opposite.  An example is cleave; it can mean tear apart, and it can mean attach oneself to.  Genesis 2:24 says, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast (KJV: "cleave") to his wife, and they shall become one flesh."  A lot of marriage ceremonies quote Matthew 19:6, which says, "What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate."  The verse could be paraphrased, "What God has cleaved together let no man cleave apart."

In my study of 1 Samuel 15 I discovered a Hebrew antonym in the word translated repent.  Now I am not a Hebrew scholar by any means, but in Strong's Definitions we find that the Hebrew word nāḥam can mean "to be grieved" or it can also mean "to be consoled" or "comforted."

Let's come back to that.

1 Samuel 13 recounts the first major conflict between Samuel, the prophet of God, and Saul, the first king of Israel.  It was when Samuel had instructed Saul to wait for him 7 days before going to war against the Philistines.  Saul saw that the Philistine army grew day by day, and he was getting pretty nervous.  On the seventh day Samuel was late.  Since he was not there, Saul offered a sacrifice so that they would be blessed in the battle.  As soon as the sacrifice was done, Samuel showed up and chided Saul for taking it upon himself.  God would not accept Saul's sacrifice for a number of reasons: he had disobeyed the word of the Lord given by Samuel; he was not authorized to offer sacrifices (Saul was of the tribe of Benjamin, so he was not a Levite); Saul had offered the sacrifice, not as an act of worship that might invoke the blessing of God, but rather as a superstitious ritual designed to bring good luck.

The second conflict between Samuel and Saul is in chapter 15, which is the focus of our study today.  The word of the Lord came through Samuel, who told Saul that when he went up against another enemy, the Amalekites, he was to give them over to destruction. "Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have.  Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. (verse 3)"  The wickedness of Amalek was so great that God was done with them, and commanded Saul to destroy them completely.

God did give the army of Israel victory over the Amalekites.  However, Saul did not utterly destroy them.  "But Saul and the people spared Agag (the King of Amalek) and the best of the sheep and of the oxen and of the fattened calves and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them.  All that was despised and worthless they devoted to destruction. (verse 9)"  Saul took it upon himself to decide what was worthless, and everything else he counted as spoils of war.

The word of the Lord came to Samuel: "I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments." And Samuel was angry, and he cried to the Lord all night.  And Samuel rose early to meet Saul in the morning.  And it was told to Samuel, "Saul came to Carmel, and behold, he set up a monument for himself and turned and passed on and went down to Gilgal."  And Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said to him, "Blessed be you to the Lord.  I have performed the commandment of the Lord."  And Samuel said, "What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of oxen that I hear?"  (1 Samuel 15:10-14)

Turning Away

Note the complete turning away of Saul in the passage.  "he has turned back from following Me."   Instead of giving God the glory, "he set up a monument to himself."  When Samuel confronted him, Saul lied: "I have performed the command of the Lord."  Sin gives way to sin.  When you have to lie to cover up a sin, the sin is compounded.  Sinning against the Lord is equal to setting yourself up as the supreme being, the one who has the last word.

Setting himself up as a god, Saul erected a monument to himself.  But even before that, he had decided that there was some good in the Amalekites.  He spared their king, perhaps wanting to make him a servant in Saul's court, so that all could see how great Saul was.  He spared the best of the animals, then tried to cover his sin--when Samuel asked how he could hear the sounds of the animals, Saul said, "The people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen to sacrifice to the Lord your God, and the rest we have devoted to destruction. (verse 15)"  Again with the lies.  "Then Samuel said to Saul, 'Stop!  I will tell you what the Lord said to me this night.'  And he (Saul) said to him, 'Speak'. (verse 16).

Samuel went on to tell Saul that God regretted making him king.  God had turned away from Saul.  If only Saul had been obedient, God might have made him a dynasty.  Instead, Saul made his own sacrifice before the battle with the Philistines (chapter 13) and now in chapter 15 he lies to Samuel again, saying that he had intended to sacrifice the sheep and oxen to the Lord.  God will not accept a sacrifice that He Himself did not command, or one that is given in disobedience to His express will.  "And Samuel said, 'Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord?  Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen that the fat of rams.' (verse 22)."

Repentance

Saul said to Samuel, "I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice.  Now therefore please pardon my sin and return with me that I may bow before the Lord."  And Samuel said, "I will not return with you.  For you have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel."  As Samuel turned to go away, Saul seized the skirt of his robe, and it tore.  And Samuel said to him, "The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this day and has given it to a neighbor or yours, who is better than you.  And also the Glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for He is not a man, that He should have regret."  --1 Samuel 15:24-29

Saul said he was sorry, but then gave excuses.  I have sinned, he said, but it was because I feared the people.  Saul was king, for goodness sake.  Whatever he told the people, they would do; and if they disobeyed, then the sin would be on them, not on Saul.  Any time we say, "I'm sorry, but..." that is a false repentance.  "I'm sorry, but it's not my fault."  Yes, actually, it is.

Saul said he repented, but did nothing to show it.  Jesus said in Matthew 3:8 that we should "Produce fruit in keeping with repentance."  When Paul was making his case to King Agrippa, he said he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, "but declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem and throughout the region of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance."  God doesn't want lip service.  He expects our actions to show new motivation.  A new motivation leads to new motions.  Matthew 7:20 says, "Thus you will recognize them by their fruits."

It was Samuel, not Saul, who killed Agag the king of the Amalekites.  Samuel said (in verse 33), "As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women."  Agag probably had participated in child sacrifice, which the Bible says God did not command "nor did it ever enter His mind." (Jeremiah 19:5).  Today we do not burn children on an altar to an idol, but we do condone child sacrifice in utero, sacrificing children to the god of convenience.  People, we need to repent.

Jesus commanded us to "take up our cross daily" and follow Him.  We need to repent every day, because we sin every day.

God is our example

So how do we reconcile verse 29, which says "(God) is not a man, that he should repent (or have regret)", and verse 35 where it says, "And the Lord repented (regretted) that He had made Saul king over Israel"?  God does not sin, so why would He repent?

This is where the lesson in language can be helpful.  Remember we said that the Hebrew word for "repent" or "regret" was nāḥam?  It can mean to be sorry, to rue, to repent, to suffer grief.  It is helpful to remind ourselves that God suffers grief from our sin, not His own.  He comforts Himself, or consoles Himself or eases His own discomfort by finding another way.  In this case He called David to be the next king; David was one who was called "a man after God's own heart."  David showed the fruit of repentance when he messed up, and did not just give lip service like Saul did.

This Hebrew contronym that we translate as regret or repentance can be evident in our lives as well.  When we have sinned, our grief and sorrow is almost unbearable.  When we repent, we experience relief.  Many people testify that when they turned from their sins, the weight of the world was lifted off their shoulders.

I think God put these verses in our Bible, the ones that say He repented, to be our example.  Not that He had sinned, but that He had turned to a different way.  Exodus 32:14 says, "And the Lord relented (or repented) from the disaster that He had spoken of bringing on His people."  In that case, He had pronounced judgement on the people of Israel for their sin.  When they repented, He relented.  It is the same with us: when we repent, He will relent.  

Will Lamrtine Thompson (1847 - 1909) wrote the words to the hymn "Softly and Tenderly".  In it is this line: "Though we have sinned He has mercy and pardon, pardon for you and for me."  We are weighted down by sin, and it grieves God.  Our sorrowful repentance causes Him to joyfully relent, producing consolation for both Him and us.  No wonder "there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents." (Luke 15:10).