Bible Contradictions?

A friend recently asked me the following question. "How can God regret His decisions?" He had been discussing 1 Samuel 15 where God says to the prophet Samuel, "I regret that I have made Saul king." (1 Sam 15:11)    

 Here is how I answered: 

 *Indeed, these are tough passages when God seems to change His course of action, "repent," or "regret," especially given the passages that state that God does not change his mind or repent (Numbers 23:19 for example). I think these are primarily anthropomorphisms...in other words, we try to describe God using human terms. A similar anthropomorphism is to say that "God's arm" did this...do we think that God has an arm like a human? We say this of trees as well..."look at the arms of that tree!" It is the best language we have to describe something that is a bit beyond our full understanding. So, God "regrets," but not in the same way a human does (regret at sin, bad choices, surprised by what happened, etc.). God's "regret" in this case can be thought of as a planned course of action (see 1 Samuel 8 where God predicts what will happen when Israel gets a king). God can still experience emotion, sadness, regret, pain, etc. EVEN THOUGH HE KNEW the event would happen. For example, when Jesus weeps over Jerusalem, is it because he is taken off guard by their unwillingness to repent? No...but he still feels the pain and sadness of it all (even though he knows what will happen and knows the future solution). A short article by John Piper states something similar...you may find his way of describing it helpful as well: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-repentance-of-god