Is God Grateful?

Let's start with a definition. Merriam-Webster defines "grateful" as

a: appreciative of benefits received

b: expressing gratitude

This immediately made me think of God's response to Noah's offering:

Noah built an altar to the Lord and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the Lord smelled the pleasing odor, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of humans, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done. (Gen. 8:20-22)

It seems to me both attitudes are expressed here. God appreciates the benefit of the sacrifice, which produces a "pleasing odor" for him, and he expresses his gratitude to Noah by promising never to curse the ground again. a A few lines later God expresses his appreciation to Noah by giving him the sign of the rainbow and blessing his family.

Mutual gratitude

Yes, God is grateful. We are created in God's image and God encourages us to be grateful. It stands to reason that God would not encourage positive attributes from us that God does not also possess. He wants us to be good because he is good. He wants us to love him because he loves us. He wants us to be grateful and he returns gratitude to us when we please him. When we forgive others, he forgives us and appreciates that we act as he does.

The biblical concept of mercy/lovingkindness implies mutuality. The Hebrew term here is chesed. for example:

For the mountains may move And the hills be shaken, but my chesed shall never move from you, nor My covenant of friendship be shaken — said YHWH, who takes you back in love. (Isa 54:10)

God's gratitude to humans is expressed in scriptures such as some of those quoted in the OP and many others.

• In Genesis 1, God expresses satisfaction toward his creation by declaring "it is good" after each day, and "it is very good" after the creation of man and woman. He expressed his gratitude at finally seeing his image reflected in Adam and Eve by richly blessing to be fruitful, fill the earth and have dominion over all things of creation.

• After Noah successfully completed the ark and guides his family through the Flood Judgement, God similarly declared his gratitude by blessing him and his family.

God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth... Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you, and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.

• When the Israelite kingdom was established, God expressed his gratitude for David: "I have found David, son of Jesse, to be a man after my heart, who will carry out all my wishes." (Acts 13:22)

• In the Parable of the Talents, Jesus portrays the master as grateful to his servant: ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’ (Mt. 26)

In the parable of the Prodigal Son, the father expresses his gratitude for the son's return by blessing him with rich gift. This shows that God is deeply grateful when sinners repent and return to his embrace. As Jesus said in Luke 15:10 "I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance."

Blessings are an expression of gratitude

One could go on an on: We are told literally dozens of times that our offerings produce a "pleasing odor" to the Lord. God is appreciates when we reflect his attributes such as goodness, trustworthiness, integrity, purity, righteousness and loving-kindness. God is our Father, who naturally wants to thank us when we return his love. God blesses us when we please him because it his nature (as it is ours) to respond in gratitude to acts and attitudes that reflect his heart as a parent. Jesus taught the beatitudes to demonstrate this.

God's desire for a loving relationship with humans is expressed many times throughout the Bible. When a person's love is returned with kindness, joy and gratitude result. Indeed, we may even see the purpose of God's creation as achieving a mutual relationship of joy and gratitude with mankind. God expresses his gratitude do us by giving us blessings.

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. - Romans 11:33-36

It is interesting that the words grateful or gratitude, seldom appear in the Bible. When they do appear in certain translations they translate a word that is usually translated as grace. Interesting also is that "gratitude" is never used in place of "grace" when the grace in view is God's grace. It is only used when viewing our response to God's lovingkindness toward us. Therefore, I think a distinction needs to be made between God being pleased with His creation:

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. - Genesis 1:31

and God being grateful to His creation. His immutability affords some theological ground for this distinction.

If God is immutable, that is if He cannot be changed in any real, intrinsic way, then for God to be grateful He must have always been grateful or possessed the capacity for gratefulness even prior to creation. At some point in eternity (if such a phrase makes any sense) prior to the creation of heaven and earth when there was just God, to what or whom would He have been grateful? Can self-existence be grateful to itself for anything? I suggest the answer is no.

If God, in this eternal state, had an unfulfilled or unexercised capacity for gratefulness then it must be argued that He created in order to satisfy some lack within Himself; that He created so that He could express something that He needed or wanted to express but could not.

This is because gratefulness is a response. Unlike the love of God, which is unmerited and uni-directional, gratefulness is a response to "benefits received" which indicates a fulfilled lack within the grateful party. One cannot be grateful unless one receives something from another that one did not and possibly could not have alone. The Cambridge dictionary defines grateful as:

showing or expressing thanks, especially to another person

I suggest, then, that gratefulness is unique to the creation as a response to the creator and that, while God may be pleased with His children ("Well done good and faithful servant", "pleasing aroma of sacrifice", etc), He cannot benefit or be added unto by them in a way that could elicit gratefulness.

The over-riding tenor of Scripture bids us beware of thinking so highly of ourselves that we could add to Deity:

“Will any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and recline at table’? Will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, and dress properly, and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink’? Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’” - Luke 17:7-10