Regret

Whateverman asks...

God regretted the way he'd created humanity - right?

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regret
verb
1.to feel sorrow or remorse for (an act, fault, disappointment, etc.):
He no sooner spoke than he regretted it.
2.to think of with a sense of loss:
to regret one's vanished youth.

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The Lord saw that the human beings on the earth were very wicked and that everything they thought about was evil. He was sorry he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the Lord said, "I will destroy all human beings that I made on the earth. And I will destroy every animal and everything that crawls on the earth and the birds of the air, because I am sorry I have made them." Genesis 6:5-7

Perhaps God did not regret "the way" he made humanity. Rather, the text seems to indicate that God regretted that he had made humanity at all.

What was the cause of God's disappointment? Verse 5 seems to indicate that it was man's choice to be evil that was the disappointment.

Because God is holy (set apart, perfect and pure), God cannot abide wickedness and evil of man.

So the humanity that God created chose evil rather than choosing God's righteousness, and by their own choice, they prevent themselves from being with God.

God has "lost" every one of the people that he created. God is troubled by the great loss of these people. By their own choice, all of these people are already "lost" to God. Even if God allows the people to live, they still cannot be with him. So there is no loss to God if they are all destroyed.

Except that God finds one man, Noah, who chooses God's righteousness.

cf. Isaiah 51

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Perhaps the idea that God was "sorry" is a rudimentary illustration. Perhaps it serves as a picture we can understand, which illustrates an idea which we can not fully comprehend.