Friday
Friday
The Debate over Divorce
Haven’t you read … that at the beginning the Creator “made them male and female,” and said, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh”?
Matthew 19:4–5
Once again some Pharisees came to Jesus to test him. According to Matthew, their question was this: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” (v. 3). It was a test question about the grounds for divorce and has a modern ring about it. But it was an old question too. During the first century BC the rival Pharisaic parties led by Rabbi Shammai and Rabbi Hillel respectively were debating this very question. Rabbi Shammai was strict, maintaining that divorce was permissible only for a serious sexual offense. Rabbi Hillel, on the other hand, was lax, arguing that a man might divorce his wife for even the most trivial offenses, such as that she was quarrelsome or a bad cook. So the Pharisees wanted to embroil Jesus in this rabbinic debate. Whose side was Jesus on?
Jesus did not give the Pharisees a direct answer to their question about divorce; instead, he spoke to them about marriage. He referred them back to Genesis 1 and 2, drawing their attention to the two facts that human sexuality is a divine creation and human marriage a divine institution. For he bracketed two texts (Gen. 1:27; 2:24) and made God the author of both. For the same Creator who “at the beginning … ‘made them male and female’” (Matt. 19:4) also said (in the biblical text), “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh” (v. 5). “Therefore,” Jesus said, adding his personal endorsement, “what God has joined together [literally, “yoked together”], let man not separate” (v. 6). This teaching is unambiguous. The marriage bond is more than a human contract; it is a divine yoke. Although Moses permitted divorce for a serious offense, Jesus called it a concession to the hardness of human hearts: “It was not this way from the beginning” (v. 8). In my own pastoral ministry I have found Jesus’s priority a very helpful rule. Whenever anybody asks to come and talk with me about divorce, I decline—until we have first talked about marriage and reconciliation.
For further reading: Matthew 19:3–9