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64 Tough Topicslike the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O houseof Israel. If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom,that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and ifthat nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil,I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. And if atany time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I willbuild and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening tomy voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to doto it. Now, therefore, say to the men of Judah and the inhabitantsof Jerusalem: “Thus says the Lord, Behold, I am shaping disasteragainst you and devising a plan against you. Return, every onefrom his evil way, and amend your ways and your deeds.”But they say, “That is in vain! We will follow our own plans, andwill every one act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart.”That God declared his intention to destroy Nineveh, only towithhold his hand when they repented, is thus no threat to the doctrineof immutability. On the contrary, had God destroyed Ninevehnotwithstanding its repentance, he would have shown himself mutable.William Shedd explains:If God had treated the Ninevites after their repentance, as hehad threatened to treat them before their repentance, this wouldhave proved him to be mutable. It would have showed him to beat one time displeased with impenitence, and at another withpenitence. Charnock . . . remarks that “the unchangeableness ofGod, when considered in relation to the exercise of his attributesin the government of the world, consists not in always acting inthe same manner, however cases and circumstances may alter;but in always doing what is right, and in adapting his treatmentof his intelligent creatures to the variation of their actions andcharacters. When the devils, now fallen, stood as glorious angels,they were the objects of God’s love, necessarily; when they fell,they were the objects of God’s hatred, because impure. The samereason which made him love them while they were pure, madehim hate them when they were criminal.” It is one thing for Godto will a change in created things external to himself and anotherthing for him to change in his own nature and character. 77William G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, vol. 1 (1889; repr., Minneapolis: Klock & Klock, 1979),352–53 (emphasis mine).