I think that is a good example of precisely the kind of thing I was talking about when I said that human language applied to God must always be analogical and not univocal.
How can the Bible be "human language" if the Bible was truly written by God Himself?
Saying that God regretted or repented of something, which we occasionally find in Scripture, does not mean that he experienced the emotion of regret that we mean when we apply it to ourselves, at least not in the exact same way.
Then why did God say it, or why did He put it there in His word if it conveys the wrong message?
It is an expression that applies a concept we are familiar with in our own experience to God, as a way of getting as close as possible to explaining what God did.
It does not do that for me; if anything, it causes the reader to come to the conclusion that when God said: "Let us make man in our image", that God has more humanly traits than He is given credit for. You are drawing your conclusion to fit your belief system.
It is also an expression that relates the story of the flood from the human vantage point. God's relationship to the world changed, and viewed from the vantage point of that world, it's God who changed, but if we were to step outside of time, we would see that it was the world changing in how it experienced God.
You are assuming that God wrote the account from a human vantage point, because nowhere does God say that He wrote this from a human vantage point. Why would He write it from a human vantage point when He is God?
If I am swimming against the current of a river and then turn around and swim with it, from my perspective the river repented, but from the river's perspective I did. It is similar to when we talk about the sun moving across the sky. There's nothing wrong with expressing it that way--the sun truly does move across the sky--but when we say that we're refering to what it does from our vantage point, and not from some absolute frame of reference.
I see your point, but somehow it doesn't fit into my perception of God. He is my God, and for Him to paint Himself as a human, makes Him a human, and not God.
Some of the other occurrences of God repenting in Scripture make this more clear. For example, in the book of Jonah, God sends Jonah to announce that Ninevah will be destroyed, but when they hear that warning they repent, and so God changes his mind and spares them. But it is plain from the story that that was exactly what God intended to do all along, and that not only did God know that, but even Jonah knew it, and the reason Jonah disliked the mission was that he didn't want them to be spared. So in Jonah, God's change of mind is clearly a change of mind relative to Ninevah, not relative to the timeless plan that only he knows.
Similarly, when Israel worshiped the golden calf, God said to Moses, "Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation." (Exod 32:10). But Moses begged God to change his mind (v. 12), and he did (v. 14). The thing is, the appeal Moses makes isn't some novel new argument that Moses dreamed up that caught God by surprise, it was repeating back to God all the reasons God had already revealed for why he would bring Israel into the promised land. So Israel experienced God changing his mind from their vantage point, but inside God's mind as God experiences his own thoughts (if I may indulge in language that pushes the limits of how anyone can speak of God even analogically), he did not learn anything new from Moses or come to think anything he did not already think.
Again, you are coming to this conclusion to explain why God regretted making man. Why can't you just admit He regretted making man? If when the Bible is read it always has a meaning that wasn't intended, why read it? Because if what you say is true, then God purposely confuses His readers; giving them impressions of what He is, or is not, that are not true.
This is why I have a difficult time with the Old Testament. It has God killing people, and He is always angry. Jesus on the other hand, is always showing love and mercy, and does not strike back when being reviled. He sets a better example of love than the God of the Old Testament, and that doesn't make sense, considering that Jesus said: "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father".
Edit: The irony just hit me of you appealing to the story of the great flood for evidence that the God of the Bible does not cause natural disasters.
I don't believe in the Global Flood Theory; there is absolutely nothing that scientifically supports it. In fact, I don't believe many of the stories in the Old Testament; especially the ones where God is painted to look like a murdering megalomaniac.
edit: there is a story in Samuel I don't believe in. Jesus loved little children. He told them "Come to me!" Yet we have a story at 1 Samuel 15: 1-3 that has God ordering Saul to murder little infants. I don't buy it.
"1) Samuel said to Saul, “I am the one the LORD sent to anoint you king over his people Israel; so listen now to the message from the LORD. 2) This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. 3) Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them;
put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’ ”
