BIBLE DIGEST -
Number 55
November 1995
DIVORCE
AND REMARRIAGE
A CONSIDERATION OF MATTHEW 19:8 AND MARK 10:5.
By Fred Blank
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On first
reading of these two passages, one gains the impression that Jesus is saying
that Moses was influenced by hard hearted people to write a law that
permitted them to divorce their wives. In other words, Moses over-rode a
divine principle ("from the beginning it was not so") to let people
do what they wanted to do, rather than insist that they obey God's original
plan for marriage. Some have
explained this as being simply a case of Moses adopting God's "second
best". Can this be
what Jesus was trying to convey? If it was, it
creates a number of major problems in understanding the other thoughts
expressed by Jesus in the surrounding verses. It is evident that the
Pharisees were attempting to test Jesus' views about divorce. They wanted to
know how his teaching compared with other prevailing opinions. Hence their
question (Matthew 19:3) “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife
for just any reason” and (Mark 10:2) "Is it
lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" In reply, Jesus
referred the Pharisees back to Genesis. “He who made them at the beginning 'made them
male and female'”. (Matthew19:4-6) He concluded by
saying, “that what God has joined together, let not man separate”. Grasping that
this virtually eliminated the question of whether a man can divorce his wife,
at all, the Pharisees appealed to Moses. They referred to the only place in
the Law of Moses where the subject is addressed, (Deuteronomy 24:1). It was from
this law that the Pharisees had developed their arguments in support of
divorce. It is generally understood by most scholars, that there were in fact
two main schools of thought at the time, as to how the decree by Moses
applied. How then are we
to understand the thoughts expressed by Jesus, that tend to suggest on
cursory reading, that what Moses recorded was the outcome of trying to cater
for hard hearted people. What Jesus goes
on to say after making this remark, strongly suggests that we need to take a
fresh look at what Jesus was really saying. In His
following statement, Jesus spells out the only situation in which a divorce
could be viewed as acceptable. Was Jesus,
introducing an entirely new provision or was he in fact conveying the
understanding that Moses had intended in the first place?. If Jesus was
conveying the correct interpretation of what Moses wrote, then his comment,
which is commonly understood to say that hard heartedness caused Moses to
write a precept to accommodate divorce, must be seriously reviewed The rendition
of Matthew 19:8 in the
Amplified New Testament provides a possible clue as to what Jesus was really
saying. It reads, "Jesus said
to them, Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses permitted you to
dismiss and repudiate a wife". What was it
that permitted them to dismiss and repudiate a wife? It was their hardness of
heart! If this is how
this is meant to be understood, then Moses was not writing to give permission
for divorce. Rather it was their hardness of heart which permitted them to
use what Moses had written, to support their arguments for divorce. If this is how
these difficult words of Jesus are meant to be understood, then it clearly
leads one to believe that what Moses wrote was not a decree to support
divorce. Understood correctly, it should have limited divorce, to the single
cause for which divorce was permissible. Moses had no intention at all, of
allowing Jews to divorce their wives, except for that one very limited cause. Jesus seems to
have seen it this way. It seems more
logical to conclude that it was hardness of heart which permitted the Jews to
take licence from what Moses wrote, to divorce their wives for many incorrect
reasons, than to insist that Moses introduced a concession that cut across
God's "perfect will". Understanding
what Jesus meant, in this way, harmonises the teachings of Moses with those
of Jesus. Other associated difficulties are removed. So the
difficult words in question, spoken by Jesus, could perhaps be paraphrased as
follows: "Hardness
of heart makes you understand what Moses wrote the way you do, but that is
not the way it was from the beginning. Moses meant you
to understand that premarital sex is the only valid ground for divorce, and
this is an exception rather than the rule. Finally, if
what Moses recorded in Deuteronomy 24:1
was God's "second best", for the benefit of hard hearted people,
which of the two prevailing schools of thought in existence in Jesus' day,
embraced the correct understanding? In fact, Jesus
was saying that neither view was right! Thus any
grounds for seeing this as a precept to accommodate the wishes of hard
hearted people must be invalid. |