‘God repented.’ This is put in human language so we can understand it.
Even as Christians, how lightly we sin. How easily we sin without thinking of the heart of God and the grief that we cause our Saviour who bought us and paid for us. The Bible speaks of God being grieved here, and urges us not to grieve the Holy Spirit. We cannot simply dismiss this as meaningless language on the basis that God is impassable and cannot be affected by anything we do. There is something in the heart of God that is analogous to the grief we feel at the evil behaviour of others, and it should trouble us that God is said to be grieved in this way.