Who can tell if God will turn and relent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?
All Commentaries on Jonah 3:9 Go To Jonah 3
Tertullian of Carthage
AD 220
Divine repentance takes in all cases a different form from that of man, in that it is never regarded as the result of improvidence or of fickleness, or of any condemnation of a good or an evil work. For it will have no other meaning than a simple change of a prior purpose; and this is admissible without any blame even in a man, much more in God, whose every purpose is faultless. Now in Greek the word for repentance (METANOIA) is formed, not from the confession of sin, but from a change of mind, which in God we have shown to be regulated by the occurrence of varying circumstances.
