Jesus then left that place and went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan. Again crowds of people came to him, and as was his custom, he taught them.
2 Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”
3 “What did Moses command you?” he replied.
4 They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.”
5 “It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. 6 “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ 7 ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, 8 and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
10 When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. 11 He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. 12 And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.”
After Jesus concludes his private teaching with the disciples, he again is on the road. The crowd once again gathers and now rather than a miracle, Jesus teaches them.
Some of the Pharisees come and ask Jesus about divorce. This is not the first time the topic appears in Mark, earlier John the Baptist has been beheaded because of his repudiation of the divorce and remarriage of Herodias. It appears that the topic was as much of a hot potato then as it is now in many religious circles. Will Jesus respond with scripture or will Jesus take a pragmatic approach. "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?", they ask. It was a time when a man could easily end a marriage and then have no responsibility for the woman he had cast aside. Most importantly to those who ask the question, will Jesus say that divorce is wrong and then potentially end up on the wrong side of Herod and potentially meet the same judgement?
Rather than a direct reply, Jesus asks for Moses' command on the issue. This poses the interesting question--are Moses' commands God's commands? Or is Jesus implying that the Pharisees are more concerned with Moses' announcements than God's intention.
The Pharisees respond that Moses had established a legal process that allowed the marriage to be dissolved. They use Deuteronomy 24:1-4 as their citation--which ironically is not a "command" about divorce. This passage is not about the legality of divorce, but its practical implication. A man who has divorced his wife may not remarry her after she has been married to someone else according to Moses. The assumption is that with a legal document divorce is permitted. This is one of the many times when Jesus turns the question he is asked back on the questioner and they reveal that they already knew the answer.
It must be kept in mind that arranged marriages that intertwined families were the order of the day. To get a divorce was not merely to rend the nuclear family, but it was a form of disobedience to the will of the parents and thus a fracturing of the Ten Commandments.
If the Pharisees knew the answer, then one might wonder why they asked. It may be due to a controversy of the day over the grounds that made a divorce permissible. One rabbinic school of thought believed that divorce was only permitted when a woman had an affair. Another rabbinic school had a long list of acceptable reasons including ruining a meal. The Pharisees may really have wanted Jesus to tell them under what conditions divorce was an option.
But Jesus does not want to get into an argument about conditions. He declares that Moses allowed divorce because of the hard heartedness of people. So if divorce is legal is it God's intention? The answer here clearly is no. Jesus does not give a list of acceptable reasons for divorce. Instead, he goes back to Genesis to argue that God's intention for marriage is that it be the establishing of a permanent new family situation. The law has provision for the frailties and sinfulness of human beings, but marriage is intended by God to be permanent.
Jesus goes on to say that no person should separate what God has joined, which seems to assign blame for the divorce not just on the parties in the marriage, but also those who are outside the marriage and for whatever reason whether it be gossip or lust or some other cause that places fracturing stress on the relationship.
The disciples who are afraid to ask Jesus about his death and resurrection, are fearless in asking Jesus about this hot button social issue when they finally get him into the privacy of the house. Jesus tells the disciples that both a man or a woman who enter into a new marriage commit adultery against their previous spouse.
It is a rather different interpretation than many would have had during Jesus day. First, his response assumes that women could initiate a divorce. This was not the case in Jewish law although it was in the Roman world. Second, he suggests that a man who remarries commits adultery against her (whether the first or second wife, we don't know). In the Jewish world, only men could be the victim of adultery as they were the only party in the marriage that could gain or lose honor. Jesus raises the possibility that women are equal partners in a marriage relationship.
But with this equality comes an equal share of the responsibility. Divorce is not God's intent but it can be initiated by either the man or the woman and either also can enter into dishonoring relationships. It is not clear, but it may be that Jesus here is speaking against marriages where one party divorces another to pursue someone else and then marries them.
This is not an easy passage. The concepts in it may use the same words we use for modern relationships, but they portray practices of the ancient world that may only shadow those of the modern world. I think when faced with the question of divorce, we should give the same answer that Jesus does. God's intention is that marriage is permanent, but we are fallen creatures in a fallen order and God's intentions are not perfectly lived out. That is where the power of grace resides.
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