Numbers 23:19

But let us hear what he announces to him. "Not as a man," he says, "is God deceived, nor as a son of man is he himself frightened." Do not hold, he says, this opinion about God, so as to think that he is like a man who can be thwarted in the things he speaks. For men are hindered by many occasions and vices, so that what they say is not true. For either they speak in anger, and when the anger ceases they have spoken in vain, or for the sake of fear or desire or boastfulness and other things like these; and indeed vain and empty will be everything whatsoever they have spoken while vice held sway. But God, in whom there is no passion, no frailty, says everything he says according to the merits of the causes; and therefore he can never be thwarted, because whatever is brought forth by reason cannot be devoid of reason. God, therefore, is not like a man who speaks in vain, nor is he frightened as a son of man — or, as we read in other copies: nor does he frighten as a son of man. In men, terror too sometimes changes a resolve; but God, who is above all things, by whom could he be frightened so as to change his resolve? But if we take it according to what we said is read in other copies, that is: "nor does he frighten as a son of man," this will seem to be said: that men indeed sometimes make terrors and threats out of boastfulness, even at times against those whom they cannot harm; but God does not frighten men as one who cannot punish, but even if he frightens, he frightens with reason; for he frightens in order to rebuke a man in the tribulation of the hearing, so that, deterred by the word of the threat, he who acts wickedly may amend himself, and the very punishment of his wicked deeds may not come upon him. God, therefore, does not frighten as a man does; for man, as we said, terrifies out of boastfulness, but God terrifies for the sake of amendment.

After this he says: "When he has said, shall he not do it? shall he speak, and not abide by it?" The passage is to be read thus, as if he spoke in the manner of one asking: he — that is, God — what he says, will he not also do? and the things he has spoken, will he not abide in them? Since indeed men do not do what they say, and through the vice of human frailty do not abide in the things they speak; for man is changeable, but God is unchangeable. But someone may object and say: how then did God not abide in the things he spoke concerning Nineveh, that after three days it should be overthrown? nor in the things he spoke concerning David, where death had been promised for three days, to lay waste the people, yet within one day, up to the hour of the midday meal, it ceased? And perhaps it will seem that these things which are said by way of question are not to be taken altogether as fixed, but that there is a certain figure of speech which seems to show something intermediate, yet does not declare the force of a fixed and irrevocable statement — so that something is seen to be said more moderately in what is written, "When he has said, shall he not do it?" than if it had been written, "When he has said, he will by all means do it." But let us also review the very passages of Scripture which are set down either in Jonah or in the books of Kingdoms, lest perhaps there too, as is customary, the divine Scripture may hold something of a secret. It is written, then, in Jonah: "And the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amathi, saying: Rise and go to Nineveh, the great city, and preach in it, for the cry of its wickedness has ascended to me." And after the whale was commanded, and it cast Jonah out onto the land, again it is written: "And the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying: Rise and go to Nineveh, the great city, and preach in it according to the preaching which I spoke to you." And Jonah indeed preached and said: "Yet three days" — or, as the Hebrews say they have it written, "yet forty days" — "and Nineveh shall be destroyed." But the men of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and clothed themselves in sackcloth, from the least to the greatest of them. And a little later: "And God saw their works," it says, "that they were turned from their evil ways; and he repented" — or, as we read in other copies, "God was entreated…