Does God ever change His mind, or does God repent?

As far as 1 Samuel 15:11 goes, it depends on which translation you’re using. The NIV says “grieved” in place of “repent.” 1 Samuel 15: 29 (a few verses later) states that God does not change his mind. You should notice that in this passage, God isn’t the one changing here, but the situation is. God saw it as good to have this guy as King for as long as he was loyal to God, and then handed over the Kingdom to someone else as soon as he wasn’t.

If I told a child “As long as you’re good, you can play in the park with the other children,” and then the kid starts smacking others upside the head, I wouldn’t be changing my mind if I yanked him out of there. The reason I allowed him to play in the park in the first place was that he was being good. If that’s no longer the case, in order for me to stay consistent with why I’m letting him be there, I should take him out.

We see in the 11th verse that God repented, changed His mind, about King Saul because Saul had not obeyed Him.

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Not really. You have to realize that God exists outside of time (The past, present, and future are all “now” to him), and so Saul not obeying him wasn’t any surprise. For as long as Saul was a pretty good fellow, God was going to let him stay in there (It was like a condition of being given that position).

It can be affirmed from the start that God’s essence and character, his resolute determination to punish sin and to reward virtue, are unchanging (see Malachi 3:6). These are absolute and unconditional affirmations that scripture everywhere teaches. But this does not mean that all his promises and warnings are unconditional. Many turn on either an expressed or an implied condition.

The classic example of this conditional teaching is Jeremiah 18:7-10, “If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it.” The cities changed – not God, and so if he was going to promote a city that was doing good, and it’s no longer doing good, he has no reason to promote it. It’s like saying “If you keep doing this, this will happen.” If they change what they’re doing, the result would be different.

This principle clearly states the condition underlying most of God’s promises and threats, even when it is not made explicit, as in the case of Jonah. Therefore, whenever God does not fulfill a promise or execute a threat that he has made, the explanation is obvious: in all of these cases, the change has not come in God, but in the individual or nation.

Of course some of God’s promises are unconditional for they rest solely on his mercy and grace. These would be: his covenant with the seasons after Noah’s flood (Gen 8:22); his promise of salvation in the oft-repeated covenant to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David; his promise of the new covenant; and his promise of the new heaven and the new earth.

I know you might ask what the nature of the change in God was that 1 Samuel 15:11 refers to when he says, “I am grieved that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions.” God is not a frozen automaton who cannot respond to persons; he is a living person who can and does react to others as much, and more genuinely, than we do to each other. Thus the same word repent is used for two different concepts both in this passage and elsewhere in the Bible. One shows God’s responsiveness to individuals and the other shows his steadfastness to himself and to his thoughts and designs.

Thus the text affirms that God changed his actions toward Saul in order to remain true to his own character or essence. Repentance in God is not, as it is in us, an evidence of indecisiveness. It is rather a change in his method of responding to another person based on some change in the other individual. The change, then, was in Saul. The problem was with Saul’s partial obedience, his wayward heart and covetousness. It’s not like God just decided one day that he didn’t like Saul and to hand over his kingdom to someone else. The Saul he gave it to was no longer there so to speak. Like my playing children example at the top, it’s like God saying, “Since you are good, you can be here.” If Saul were no longer good, God would have to remove him (lest he change his mind about why he let Saul be there in the first place).

I hope this helps somewhat.

Yes He does. The old and then the new covenant. I don't have the scripture in front of me to back it up but it is true I've seen it before. Check it out. If I must research it for you then let me know and I will.

RT