Divorce And Swearing Prohibited
DIVORCE AND SWEARING PROHIBITED
MATTHEW 5:27-37
“Don’t commit adultery” means “love the sanctity of marriage, live by it in your looking and thinking as well as your behavior.”
Our Lord goes on to interpret further requirements of the Mosaic law. The seventh commandment, prohibiting adultery, is shown to forbid also the unchaste thought or glance—a ban enforceable by no earthly code or court (5:27f.). Better lose the eye—or hand—that tempts to sin than lose the life by yielding to sin (5:29f.; cf. 18:8f.).
To this admonition is appended (5:31f.) Jesus’ interpretation of the law affecting divorced persons in Deuteronomy 24:1-4. The meaning of “some indecency” in Deuteronomy 24:1 was debated in the rabbinical schools: some (eg the school of Shammai) restricted it to evidence of premarital unchastity; others (eg the school of Hillel) allowed it to embrace a wide variety of features which might displease a husband. For reasons detailed later in 19:3ff., Jesus rules that marriage is binding for life; the exceptive clause (5:32) refers to the situation in which the parties are so closely related that their marital union would be technically “fornication” in Jewish law (cf. 1 Corinthians 5:1; the RSV rendering “unchastity” is far too vague to convey the precision of the original wording). A divorced wife had no means of redress or appeal against her husband’s arbitrary decision, and as her existence in independence of a man to support her was practically impossible in that society, she was more or less bound to remarry and thus involve herself and her new husband in a relation which was illicit by the standard here set up.
Next Jesus reinterprets the law regarding oaths, based on the third commandment and elaborated in Leviticus 19:12; Numbers 30:2; Deuteronomy 23:21-23, and lays down a new procedure for his followers (5:33-37). They must not swear oaths at all: they should be known as men of their word, so that their simple “Yes” or “No” will be believed. To debate whether Christians, in view of this ruling, should or should not take the oath in courts of law is to indulge in casuistry foreign to its spirit. Some Christians indeed, notably the Society of Friends, apply Jesus’ words literally in such a situation; but their public reputation is such that most people would accept the bare word of a friend before the most vehement oaths of many others. The point is that all the followers of Jesus should have this kind of reputation.
The various oaths mentioned in 5:34-36 were substitutes for oaths sworn by God, perhaps in the vain supposition that their breach did not incur such solemn perjury as the breach of an oath taken in God’s name. The folly of such “limited liability” swearing is exposed.
“Anything more than this comes from evil” (5:37): perhaps “from the evil one” (the devil), but more probably from sinful human nature (cf. James 5:12, which echoes this injunction of Jesus).