Matthew 5:31-32, these words of Jesus about marriage and divorce and remarriage, they have had a huge huge influence on the course of millions of people’s lives over the last 2,000 years and there is a diversity of views on the implications of what Jesus is saying, there’s a diversity of views of what he actually means, but then there’s also very pastoral and practical implications of all this. Jesus is defining a greater righteousness, this greater higher calling of doing right by other people and somehow, there’s something underneath this, where Jesus is putting his finger on something where people are not doing right by each other and he wants to address that and give people God’s wisdom on it.
Deuteronomy 24:1, Jesus is going to repeat these words in another conversation later on in Matthew 19:3-12, it’s actually a longer story where you get more context and more explanation that makes things more clear. This is a live debate happening in Jesus’ day in among teachers of the Torah and rabbis, it’s super important to register, first of all their question is not even genuine, it’s a loaded question, there’s no way to win it. It’s such a controversial issue, anything you say will automatically categorize you and divide the room and nobody else will hear what you’re saying, Matthew’s saying that’s the nature of this issue. They’re asking him a question that’s so controversial and loaded, they’re hoping to discredit his reputation. Which means, they’re not asking Jesus, what are your views on marriage and divorce, it’s a very specific question about a specific debate and the reason they’re bringing that up is because of the way Jewish Bible teachers were debating all this issues in relation to Deuteronomy chapter 24.
Deuteronomy 24:1, if a man takes a woman and marries her and it comes about that she does not find favor in his eyes, because he found in her some nakedness of a matter and so he must write for her a scroll of cutting off. Divorce papers. This appears only here in the Hebrew Bible, but the phrase nakedness of a matter, this is the phrase that the rabbis are all divided about how to interpret what it means and Jesus is being drawn into a contemporary first century controversy among Jewish Bible teachers. We are literally wading into a pretty complicated debate about a real practical matter in Jesus’ time, divorce and remarriage and while the story presents it as a matter of Jewish Bible scholars engaging Jesus about interpretation, this is a high stakes question with high stakes implications, specifically for women.
Divorce was something, at least in Jewish culture or Jewish subcultures could only be initiated by men and not by women, because if only men can initiate divorce and for any reason, we’d have the makings of a really really destructive environment or at least an environment that can leave women unempowered and really vulnerable to men who want to dispose of their wives. In a narrative context from the gospel of John, the way that different readers through history have perceived Jesus’ engagement with the Samaritan woman at the well and when he said that she’s had many husbands and then the one she’s living with now is not her husband. Many people in our modern context, it would be easy to hear that and think of her as promiscuous, more likely reality in that first century context, she’s more like the throwaway wife.
Jesus quotes from the 7-day creation story, haven’t you read the one who created them from the beginning made them male and female, the one human, who became two, who are then to become one again in marriage, what God has joined together, let no human separate. For Jesus, marriage is one very powerful way that humans image God and for Jesus that’s clearly the foundation point for any thinking you have about ending that oneness or separating those two. Jesus appeals to one part of the Torah, Genesis, as kind of leverage over against an abusive interpretation of a later part of the Torah, Deuteronomy chapter 24. There’s an obsession with the concession about the rules, should we view Jesus’ teachings as the comprehensive definition or as one key scriptural text that should be set along side many others, because he doesn’t elaborate very much outside of this one particular debate. Real life and real marriage and divorce is way more complicated and so it may not always boil down to adultery, but there are lots of other reasons that covenant faithfulness can be violated.
Covenant loyalty and there’s actually necessity for nuance here, because there might be cases that don’t involve adultery, but where a covenant bond really has been violated, but through some other circumstance that Jesus just didn’t happen to name, because that’s not the debate they were having. There needs to be more flexibility and wisdom, but also more covenant faithfulness and there was a tension in Jesus’ time, that’s why the debate is sparked and there’s tension in our time too, actual life is where we live, not in a theoretical environment. God’s wisdom demands that we must treat everyone with dignity.
Deuteronomy 24:1, Jesus is going to repeat these words in another conversation later on in Matthew 19:3-12, it’s actually a longer story where you get more context and more explanation that makes things more clear. This is a live debate happening in Jesus’ day in among teachers of the Torah and rabbis, it’s super important to register, first of all their question is not even genuine, it’s a loaded question, there’s no way to win it. It’s such a controversial issue, anything you say will automatically categorize you and divide the room and nobody else will hear what you’re saying, Matthew’s saying that’s the nature of this issue. They’re asking him a question that’s so controversial and loaded, they’re hoping to discredit his reputation. Which means, they’re not asking Jesus, what are your views on marriage and divorce, it’s a very specific question about a specific debate and the reason they’re bringing that up is because of the way Jewish Bible teachers were debating all this issues in relation to Deuteronomy chapter 24.
Deuteronomy 24:1, if a man takes a woman and marries her and it comes about that she does not find favor in his eyes, because he found in her some nakedness of a matter and so he must write for her a scroll of cutting off. Divorce papers. This appears only here in the Hebrew Bible, but the phrase nakedness of a matter, this is the phrase that the rabbis are all divided about how to interpret what it means and Jesus is being drawn into a contemporary first century controversy among Jewish Bible teachers. We are literally wading into a pretty complicated debate about a real practical matter in Jesus’ time, divorce and remarriage and while the story presents it as a matter of Jewish Bible scholars engaging Jesus about interpretation, this is a high stakes question with high stakes implications, specifically for women.
Divorce was something, at least in Jewish culture or Jewish subcultures could only be initiated by men and not by women, because if only men can initiate divorce and for any reason, we’d have the makings of a really really destructive environment or at least an environment that can leave women unempowered and really vulnerable to men who want to dispose of their wives. In a narrative context from the gospel of John, the way that different readers through history have perceived Jesus’ engagement with the Samaritan woman at the well and when he said that she’s had many husbands and then the one she’s living with now is not her husband. Many people in our modern context, it would be easy to hear that and think of her as promiscuous, more likely reality in that first century context, she’s more like the throwaway wife.
Jesus quotes from the 7-day creation story, haven’t you read the one who created them from the beginning made them male and female, the one human, who became two, who are then to become one again in marriage, what God has joined together, let no human separate. For Jesus, marriage is one very powerful way that humans image God and for Jesus that’s clearly the foundation point for any thinking you have about ending that oneness or separating those two. Jesus appeals to one part of the Torah, Genesis, as kind of leverage over against an abusive interpretation of a later part of the Torah, Deuteronomy chapter 24. There’s an obsession with the concession about the rules, should we view Jesus’ teachings as the comprehensive definition or as one key scriptural text that should be set along side many others, because he doesn’t elaborate very much outside of this one particular debate. Real life and real marriage and divorce is way more complicated and so it may not always boil down to adultery, but there are lots of other reasons that covenant faithfulness can be violated.
Covenant loyalty and there’s actually necessity for nuance here, because there might be cases that don’t involve adultery, but where a covenant bond really has been violated, but through some other circumstance that Jesus just didn’t happen to name, because that’s not the debate they were having. There needs to be more flexibility and wisdom, but also more covenant faithfulness and there was a tension in Jesus’ time, that’s why the debate is sparked and there’s tension in our time too, actual life is where we live, not in a theoretical environment. God’s wisdom demands that we must treat everyone with dignity.
