Jonah 3:6-10
6 When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. 7 Then he issued a proclamation in Nineveh:
“By the decree of the king and his nobles:
Do not let any man or beast, herd or flock, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. 8 But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. 9 Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”10 When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.
The writer here doesn’t come right out and say it, but we can easily read into the last sentence here: God changed his actions based on what the people of Nineveh did. God planned to destroy the city. He sent Jonah to warn them. They turned from their evil ways. God saw that they responded to the message, so he had compassion and did not bring about the destruction he had threatened.
Was this an empty threat? Of couse we’ll never know. You can rationalize this out any way you want to: “Well, God knew that if he sent Jonah, then the people would repent, so he knew that he wasn’t going to destroy the city anyway.” Sure, maybe. That’s one way of arguing the point. But then we get to the philosopher’s points, such as this: if God knows what people are going to do at every turn, does He get bored? Is there nothing new under the sun? I think it is intriguing to postulate that God enjoys being surprised by humans and their choices. Perhaps that’s anthropomorphizing too much. But then again, we are made in the image of God and we like surprises (well, some of us do). What could possibly surprise God? I say that the action of a free will can be surprising.