Today's scripture focus is Matthew 5:31-32
Divorce
31 “It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ 32 But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.
It's interesting that this passage fell on my posting day. Over the last few years, divorce has penetrated my immediate circles and some of my friends and my family have been hurt by divorce. It has become so prevalent in our society that I don't think we as Christians are as bothered by it as we once were. Where divorce seemed out of the ordinary 20-30 years ago, it is now unusual to find someone who doesn't know someone who is divorced.
Divorce is such a touchy subject because it often involves many deep feelings. I can't possibly begin to understand those feelings because I have never been in that situation but I do struggle immensely when divorce affects Christian couples.
Matthew 5:31-32 seems to give justification for divorce but I just don't think that is what this verse implies. This commentary helps to explain a bit better what I believe:
"Matthew 5:32 does not teach that remarriage is lawful in some cases. Rather it reaffirms that marriage after divorce is adultery, even for those who have been divorced innocently, and that a man who divorces his wife is guilty of the adultery of her second marriage unless she had already become an adulteress before the divorce.
Matthew 5:32: But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, makes her an adulteress; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.4.1 Jesus assumes that in most situations in that culture a wife who has been put away by a husband will be drawn into a second marriage. Nevertheless, in spite of these pressures, he calls this second marriage adultery.4.2 The remarkable thing about the first half of this verse is that it plainly says that the remarriage of a wife who has been innocently put away is nevertheless adultery: "Everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, makes her (the innocent wife who has not been unchaste) an adulteress." This is a clear statement, it seems to me, that remarriage is wrong not merely when a person is guilty in the process of divorce, but also when a person is innocent. In other words, Jesus' opposition to remarriage seems to be based on the unbreakableness of the marriage bond by anything but death.4.3 I will save my explanation of the exception clause ("Except on the ground of unchastity") for later in the paper, but for now, it may suffice to say that on the traditional interpretation of the clause, it may simply mean that a man makes his wife an adulteress except in the case where she has made herself one.4.4 I would assume that since an innocent wife who is divorced commits adultery when she remarries, therefore a guilty wife who remarries after divorce is all the more guilty. If one argues that this guilty woman is free to remarry, while the innocent woman who has been put away is not, just because the guilty woman's adultery has broken the "one flesh" relationship, then one is put in the awkward position of saying to an innocent divorced woman, "If you now commit adultery it will be lawful for you to remarry." This seems wrong for at least two reasons.
4.41 It seems to elevate the physical act of sexual intercourse to be the decisive element in marital union and disunion.4.42 If sexual union with another breaks the marriage bond and legitimizes remarriage, then to say that an innocently divorced wife can't remarry (as Jesus does say) assumes that her divorcing husband is not divorcing to have sexual relations with another. This is a very unlikely assumption. More likely is that Jesus does assume some of these divorcing husbands will have sexual relations with another woman, but still the wives they have divorced may not remarry. Therefore, adultery does not nullify the "one-flesh" relationship of marriage and both the innocent and guilty spouses are prohibited from remarriage in Matthew 5:32."
I strongly believe that the "except for marital unfaithfulness" is not an escape from a bad marriage clause. Discussions with friends and relatives (especially those directly affected by the divorce or impending divorce of someone close to them) has made me realize that the "except for marital unfaithfulness" is a very popular excuse that many believe is supported by scripture.
The same commentary as above offers this insight:
The exception clause of Matthew 19:9 need not imply that divorce on account of adultery frees a person to be remarried. All the weight of the New Testament evidence given in the preceding ten points is against this view, and there are several ways to make good sense out of this verse so that it does not conflict with the broad teaching of the New Testament that remarriage after divorce is prohibited.
Matthew 19:9: And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.
11.1 Several years ago I taught our congregation in two evening services concerning my understanding of this verse and argued that "except for immorality" did not refer to adultery but to premarital sexual fornication which a man or a woman discovers in the betrothed partner. Since that time I have discovered other people who hold this view and who have given it a much more scholarly exposition than I did. I have also discovered numerous other ways of understanding this verse which also exclude the legitimacy of remarriage. Several of these are summed up in William Heth and Gordon J. Wenham, Jesus and Divorce (Nelson: 1984).11.2 Here I will simply give a brief summary of my own view of Matthew 19:9 and how I came to it.I began, first of all, by being troubled that the absolute form of Jesus' denunciation of divorce and remarriage in Mark 10:11,12 and Luke 16:18 is not preserved by Matthew, if in fact his exception clause is a loophole for divorce and remarriage. I was bothered by the simple assumption that so many writers make that Matthew is simply making explicit something that would have been implicitly understood by the hearers of Jesus or the readers of Mark 10 and Luke 16.Would they really have assumed that the absolute statements included exceptions? I have very strong doubts, and therefore my inclination is to inquire whether or not in fact Matthew's exception clause conforms to the absoluteness of Mark and Luke.The second thing that began to disturb me was the question, Why does Matthew use the word porneia ("except for immorality") instead of the word moicheiawhich means adultery? Almost all commentators seem to make the simple assumption again that porneia means adultery in this context. The question nags at me why Matthew would not use the word for adultery, if that is in fact what he meant.Then I noticed something very interesting. The only other place besides Matthew 5:32 and 19:9 where Matthew uses the word porneiais in 15:19 where it is used alongside of moicheia. Therefore, the primary contextual evidence for Matthew's usage is that he conceives of porneia as something different than adultery. Could this mean, then, that Matthew conceives of porneia in its normal sense of fornication or incest (l Corinthians 5:1) rather than adultery?A. Isaksson agrees with this view of porneia and sums up his research much like this on pages 134-5 of Marriage and Ministry:
Thus we cannot get away from the fact that the distinction between what was to be regarded as porneia and what was to be regarded as moicheia was very strictly maintained in pre-Christian Jewish literature and in the N.T. Porneia may, of course, denote different forms of forbidden sexual relations, but we can find no unequivocal examples of the use of this word to denote a wife's adultery. Under these circumstances we can hardly assume that this word means adultery in the clauses in Matthew. The logia on divorce are worded as a paragraph of the law, intended to be obeyed by the members of the Church. Under these circumstances it is inconceivable that in a text of this nature the writer would not have maintained a clear distinction between what was unchastity and what was adultery: moicheia and not porneia was used to describe the wife's adultery. From the philological point of view there are accordingly very strong arguments against this interpretation of the clauses as permitting divorce in the case in which the wife was guilty of adultery.
I know that my opinion (and the opinions in the above commentary) may not necessarily be "the gospel truth" (pun intended) but I believe that God designed marriage to be forever. Unwise choices in a spouse or even cheating and reckless behaviour of a spouse, do not constitute "acceptable" reasons for God to recommend divorce and it makes me a little frightened that "Christian" counsellors are selling this idea to their clients based on what appears to be a "loophole" in Matthew 5:31-32.
However, I also believe that God has allowed us certain concessions because we are slaves to sin and always fall to less than His ideal. This commentary explains it more concisely:
"God sometimes allowed what was less than ideal because people's hard hearts made the ideal unattainable (for example, Ex 13:17; 1 Sam 12:12-13). To be able to exercise some restraint over human injustice, Moses' civil laws regulated some institutions rather than seeking to abolish them altogether: divorce, polygyny, the avengers of blood, and slavery (Keener 1992b:192-96). Jewish lawyers themselves recognized that God had allowed some behavior as a concession to human weakness (Daube 1959).
Nevertheless, Jesus' opponents here assume that whatever the law addresses it permits (Mt 19:7). Jesus responds that Moses permitted this merely as a concession to Israel's hard hearts, implying that his questioners who exploit this concession also have hard hearts. Thus in Matthew (in contrast to Mark) the Pharisees even exploit Moses' concession as a command (Gundry 1982:380). American slaveholders were similarly sure that the practice of slavery in biblical times proved the Bible's approval of slavery (Sawyer 1858), the same way Muslim slaveholders applied the Qur'an (Gordon 1989:xi; B. Lewis 1990:78). Some husbands today twist biblical teachings to justify abusing their wives (see, for example, Alsdurf and Alsdurf 1989). And some churches use Jesus' words in this very passage-words that may have been meant to protect an innocent Jewish wife from being wrongfully divorced by her husband (Kysar and Kysar 1978:43; France 1985:280; M. Davies 1993:54)-to batter innocent parties in divorces. Human nature has changed very little in two millennia."
This commentary also addresses the possible mistranslation of "Marital Unfaithfulness"
"Some might jump to the immediate conclusion that "marital unfaithfulness" (as the NIV translates it) is adultery. But since we are dealing with such an important issue, we must study and think about this carefully. The word translated "marital unfaithfulness" is the Greek word "porneia", which is translated as "fornication" in the KJV. This is NOT the same Greek word that means adultery (moicheuo, moichao or moichalis). It is also clear that Jesus did not intend to give the word "porneia" (which was a general word for sexual immorality), the specific meaning of adultery. How do we know this? Consider the response of the disciples! "If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry." Whatever the Lord Jesus meant by "except for porneia", it shocked the disciples by how restrictive it was. Now at this time, the rabbis were divided by the issue of divorce. Followers of Shammai believed that divorce has only acceptable in the case of adultery, while followers of Hillel believed divorce was justified for almost any reason. If Jesus had meant that divorce was acceptable in the case of adultery, His teaching would not have shocked the disciples, since He would simply have been agreeing with one of the two rabbinic camps. Instead, His teaching shocked them by how much more restrictive it was than what the other rabbis were teaching. Clearly, the Lord Jesus did not intend adultery to be an acceptable cause for divorce.
So what did He mean by "porneia?" To say that since porneia can hold the general meaning of any sort of sexual immorality, then any sort of sexual immorality is grounds for divorce is illogical. To state that Jesus's teaching was more restrictive than that of Shammai, and yet to think that divorce would be acceptable for types of sexual immorality less serious than adultery is self-contradictory and illogical.
So again we ask the question, what did the Lord Jesus mean by "porneia?" Now we must ask ourselves, "what would the Jews of the day have understood it to be?" The Hebrew language also had words for "adultery" and "sexual immorality". The specific sin of adultery was covered by the Hebrew word "na'ap" whereas sexual immorality was covered under the word "erwa", which carries the general idea of nakedness and shame. It is most likely that the Lord Jesus was referring to "erwa" as the exception, or else Matthew would have translated His words by "moichao" (the Greek word for adultery) instead of "porneia". The disciples, well versed in the Hebrew Scriptures would have immediately thought of Leviticus 18 and 20. While adultery was a sin, the Lord was stating that divorce and remarriage was only to be allowed by the innocent partner if the guilty partner had committed "erwa". The sins listed are more foul than simple adultery, and include incest, bestiality and homosexuality. Why were the disciples to shocked? Until Jesus' teaching, they had expected that they had the right to divorce an adulterous wife. Having heard Jesus' teaching that they cannot divorce an adulterous wife, their response was "If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry."
The fact that the exception clause is only found in Matthew's Gospel is support for this position. Matthew is the Gospel that was written to the Jews. The minds of the Jewish readers would have immediately remembered the teachings of Leviticus. However Luke, who wrote his Gospel to gentiles leaves out the exception clause, because the gentiles, not knowing the Old Testament, would not have immediately thought of the proper context for Jesus' words.
So to summarize what I have presented about the exception clause, I would state that the exception in the case of "porneia" refers to sexual sins of a deeper nature than simple adultery. These sexual sins include incest, bestiality and homosexuality. This view accounts for the shock of the disciples at the restrictive nature of Jesus' teaching, the usage of Greek and Hebrew, the context of the disciples background and understanding, and the fact that the exception clause is only present in the Gospel to the Jews."
If (and I believe that's a BIG *IF*) there was an acceptable reason to divorce, I think it is this:
1 Corinthians 7:10-16
10 To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. 11 But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife.
12 To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord): If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. 13 And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him.14 For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. 15 But if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so. The brother or the sister is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace. 16 How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or, how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?
I take this portion of scripture to mean that if someone is abandoned by their spouse, then, and only then, divorce is permissible. Certainly not what God has designed for marriage but I think this is the only way that divorce is allowed. I don't believe that God intended marital unfaithfulness to be justification for divorce and certainly not for remarriage. I understand this is not a popular opinion.
Tomorrow's scripture focus: Matthew 5:33-37
Tomorrow's Bible In a Year Passage passage: 2Chron 28; 2King 16-17
6 comments:
I do agree that in some Christian circles people have become too accepting of divorce in general, and that is very sad.
I do disagree with your interpretation of this verse, as I do believe it is an exception clause. John MacArthur has an excellent sermon about this verse (actually 3 sermons on only these 2 verses, it's very specific!) and I'll just quote a couple parts from that sermon. http://www.gty.org/resources/sermons/2220/divorce-and-remarriage-part-3
Now fornication is a Greek word porniafrom which we get pornography. Pornia means according to the finest of Greek scholarship in seeing what the word means, it means simply this - I'll give you the sum of what it means in just a few words, every kind of unlawful sexual intercourse. That's what it means. Every kind.
Now some say it refers to the engagement period only or they would have used the word for adultery which is moikianot pornia.But that's not so. If the word means every kind of shameful, sinful, sexual intercourse then it will encompass also adultery won't it because that's one kind. And in this context it clearly has in mind adultery because the whole passage is about marriage. This is about marriage. Deuteronomy 24 is about marriage. And the issue is adultery as He talks to these Jewish people.
People say to me - Well then why do they use pornia? Simply because pornia is a bigger word, adultery means a sexual relationship with a person outside your marriage. Pornia means a sexual relationship with anybody, a woman, a man or an animal. It has to do even with bestiality, it has to do with incest, it has to do with sodomy or homosexuality, it has to do with prostitution, harlotry all of these things before, during after marriage. It is a broad term that encompasses everything. And I believe the reason He uses it is this, because a divorce is not only technically allowable when your partner has a relationship with somebody else but a divorce is technically allowable when your husband has any kind of unlawful sexual relationship or when your wife has any kind of unlawful sexual relationship with a man, a woman, a child or an animal. Because all of those things in the Old Testament brought about the death penalty. They all constitute the sum of a violation.....
Now let's look at specifically what Jesus says, verse 32. "But I say unto you whosoever shall divorce his wife", now this is talking about whosoever, anybody it doesn't matter who they are, anybody and everybody who divorces his wife. The word put away is the word apoluo. Now I believe it means divorce. I think that's very clear. It's used repeatedly in this way. Now let me tell you this so you'll understand it. Some people say that the word only refers to a separation. Some people don't want to a -- they don't want to see divorce here at all. Ah, they want to see only a separation. Other people want to see a broken engagement, there's a lot of talk about this referring to the betrothal period and not the real marriage. But the term apoluomeans to divorce. It is used that way all throughout the gospel. It is used that way in other places apart from Scripture. That is the most common meaning of the word when it is used in a man - wife context. It means divorce. It isn't just a separation and it isn't just a broken betrothal or a broken engagement. The term in the context, I believe, clearly show that this is the dissolution of a marriage, that divorce is in view. That you have a real marriage here.
As I said, the word apoluois used in all the gospel passages as the specific term for divorce, Matthew 5:32, Matthew 19: verses 3. 7, 8 and 9, Mark chapter 10 verses 2. 4, 11 and 12 and Luke 16:18. In all of the passages in all those three gospels where divorce is the subject apoluois the term. And what is interesting to me is that the Jews use it, sometimes it comes out of their lips, and sometimes it comes out of the Lords lips and there was never a discussion about what it meant, they knew what it meant. They didn't have to discuss whether it meant a separation or a broken engagement or a legitimate divorce or anything, its common meaning was divorce. By the way, twelve different Hebrew, Greek lexicons agree that it means divorce.
Now you can't make this refer to a broken engagement for several reasons. Number-one, when the Jews used the word they didn't have the engagement period in mind. That wasn't what they had in mind. That wasn't their normal use of the word. Further, the background of this passage is what Old Testament passage? Deuteronomy 24. Deuteronomy 24 is the background of this whole text and Deuteronomy 24 is not dealing with broken engagements, it's dealing with divorce. And so to take that engagement concept and impose it upon a passage that's dealing strictly with marriage and divorce on the basis of its Old Testament roots is really to add something that doesn't belong there. Deuteronomy 24 is not concerned with engagement periods. Further, if Christ had in mind the engagement period then He would be adding something to the Old Testament standard rather than commenting on it and reaffirming it. And if that's what He's doing it's the only time He does it throughout this whole section of the Sermon on the Mount, which makes it inconsistent with everything He has in mind. All He's doing in this part of the Sermon on the Mount, He's reiterating to them what the Old Testament has taught all the while. He is reaffirming Gods standard which hasn't changed. He's not adding to. But if this were a section on engagements since Deuteronomy 24 doesn't deal with it we would have to say He was adding something new which wasn't His purpose at all but rather affirming what Gods law has always been....
This is the clause, "except for the cause of fornication". Now listen, that same clause is in Matthew 19:9. And, you know, you hear people - Oh yes, but it's not in Mark and it's not in Luke. That's true. How many times does God have to say something to make it true? People want to argue, - Well it didn't say it in Mark and He didn't say it in Luke. Yeah, but He did say it in Matthew - twice. Listen, every time God talks about divorce He doesn't have to say everything there is to say on the subject. You know what He says in Luke is some things He didn't say in Mark. And what He says in Mark is some of the things He didn't say in Matthew. That's right. Do you know that whether you have the passages on divorce in Matthew 5, Matthew 19, Mark 10 and Luke 16 and every one of them deal with features of divorce and remarriage that the others do not all deal with? In each of those there are some specifies that aren't in the others. Why? Because each writer has a specific plan. The Spirit of God is accomplishing a specific purpose in the context of the passage. Do not force God to say everything on every subject every time He brings it up. You see, the exception clause isn't the major issue. God is not making a great announcement - You can get a divorce for fornication. His announcement is divorce creates adultery except, of course, for the cause of fornication. That's just a sort of concession. It's unreasonable for people to assume that because the Lord didn't say it everywhere He didn't mean it. Listen, if He said it once He meant it. Right? He meant it....
Well the disciples got the message, look at verse 10, "His disciples say unto Him, If the case of the man be so with his wife it is not good to marry. I mean, if you're stuck and it's that bad, forget it. If it's that indissoluble - one flesh, never put asunder. If divorce is only a concession to an evil, sinful society, if divorce is only something as a last ditch technicality for fornication and other than that marriage is permanent it's better not to get in it because you might have made a mistake and then you are stuck. "
OK - now this is me again. :)
That all being said, I don't believe at all that this is a loophole that someone in a lousy marriage should just leap on and say "Ha! Now I can finally divorce you!"
IF the adulterer is truly repentant (and we've discussed what true repentance looks like just recently), I definitely think the ideal is to work to restore the relationship.
But where there is not TRUE repentance, I do believe that this text is clear that divorce is an unsinful option.
I still think that 1 Corinthians 7:12 & 13 indicates that regardless of repentance of the adulterous spouse, "IF she/he is willing to live with [the other], [they] must not divorce..."
Oh, I absolutely agree. However, that passage is speaking about remaining unequally yoked, it has nothing to do with adultery. Even though Christians are not to marry unbelievers, if we do, we are not to leave them because of their unbelief. If they make us leave then we are released from the marriage. Or if they commit adultery and are unrepentant as per Matthew 5 and 19
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