Sermon Tone Analysis

*Divorce & Remarriage*

Comments from Lenski’s Commentary

 

 

! *Matthew 5:28*

According to The Interpretation of Matthew of Lenski's Commentaries, he says here that /"Jesus does not say that by the accomplished lusting or by and during the act of looking at the woman the man in question commits adultery.

The aorist //emoiceusen, //with //hdh //emphasizing the feature of the time, precedes these acts.

The man who casts lustful looks is an adulterer to begin with.

The sin is already 'in his heart' and only comes out in his lustful look.

If the heart were pure, without adultery, no lustful look would be possible...what the Sixth Commandment calls for is a pure heart which keeps even the eyes pure."

/(pp.

226-227)

 

!! Matthew 5:29

People will not hesitate to amputate a diseased limb that threatens life itself.

Lenski's  Interpretation of Matthew (p.227) states, /"If indeed, your right eyes is so diseased with sin, as you assert, that this eye cannot look on a beautiful woman without trapping you into lust, then, on your own assertion, about your eye, only one thing will save you from hell, to pluck it out and cast it away form you.  For on your own admission the only alternative would be that the dangerous eye continue to inflame your whole body with lust and thus send it down to hell."  /He goes on to say, /"The fallacy lying in the excuse is thus exposed.

The seat of the sin is not in the eye but, as Jesus has already indicated in v. 28, in the heart...All excuses which blame the body and man's bodily nature as though these creations of God make lust and other sins inevitable, a mere function of our bodily being, just the course of nature, end in the absurdities of successive amputations until the whole body is thrown away."/

In essence, if we blame the carnal drives of our flesh, then we have found a way to excuse the sinfulness of our heart.

Jesus exposes the root problem so that we might be seek the cure that will truly set us free.

!! Matthew 5:31

According to The Interpretation of Matthew of Lenski's commentaries, he says of this passage, /"Here Jesus refers to Deuteronomy 24 only as the false Jewish justification for their evil practice in order to place over against this practice the true intent of God's commandment.

The school of Rabbi Shammai interpreted 'the shame of nakedness' (Hebrew), 'some uncleanness in her' (A.V.) in Deuteronomy 24:1 as denoting approaches to adultery (actual adultery being punished by death in Moses' time); the laxer school of Hillel, whom the Jewish practice followed, interpreted the expression as a reference to anything displeasing to the husband; Akiba permitted divorce when the husband found a more desirable wife."/

!! Matthew 5:32

According to Lenski in The Interpretation of Matthew (pp.

230-235) "What Jesus declares as being the force of the Sixth Commandment regarding marriage is summarized in 19:6: 'What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.' God alone severs the bond by death, Romans 7:2,3.

Every other severance is excluded by the Sixth Commandment and takes place only when this commandment is violated.

Once this is understood, the words of Jesus become clearer, and several wrong interpretations are removed.

Jesus is not expounding Deuteronomy 24:1, but Exodus 20:14 as quoted in verse 27.

He is not setting up /one/ cause for divorce over against the idea of /many /causes, but is forbidding /all /divorce and all causes for divorce as being against God's intent as expressed in Exodus 20:14.

Speaking to an audience of Jews who knew nothing of a woman's divorcing her husband, he naturally specifies only the case of the husband divorcing his wife.

The fact that among us where also wives divorce their husbands his words apply to them equally, needs hardly to be added;  see Mark 10:12, who writes for Gentiles.

Those who say that Jesus here makes a wife’s fornication a legal cause for which a husband may secure a legal divorce make the word of Jesus a mere legal verdict whereas, in reality, it is something far more fundamental, namely the true moral exposition of the Sixth Commandment.

Fornication as such violates the commandment in the grossest fashion; and fornication on the part of a wife adds to this violation another that is equally gross;  by this act the wife severs her marital bond.

By it sje tjem amd tjere destroys her own marriage; and she does this apart from anything her husband may do in consequence, apart also from any law that he may invoke...Fornication on the part of either spouse breaks the Sixth Commandment in a double way: it also always destroys the marital bond.

That is why Jesus virtually says that the offended husband may dismiss a fornicating wife; apoluew refers to the Jewish situation.

He may rid himself of her; vice verse, if he be the fornicator, she may rid herself of him (not, indeed, according to the Jewish law but morally before God).

And she may do this without breaking the Sixth Commandment.

For it is the fornicator that destroys the marriage and left the spouse with a disrupted marriage.

Jesus is not discussing the legal steps that may or may not be taken.

Jesus does not legislate.

The term logos here used is not "report" or rumor of fornication but is like aitai, ratio, "cause of fornication," the sin being a fact.

It is true, the ancient legal practice stoned the fornicatress and thus ended the matter of the marriage; but she was stoned as one who had broken her marriage.

At the time of Jesus this old law was not carried out; the legal practice was now that the husband might drive out the wife.

But here is a wife 'without cause of fornication,'  and yet for some reason or other her husband proceeds to destroy her marriage with him, o apoluwn ktl., 'he releases his wife' by making use of the lax law of the Jews (Jesus is speaking of them).

It is now the husband who destroys the marriage.

The guild of the breaking the commandment rests on him.

The innocent wife is by this man's action forced into a position similar to that of the innocent husband whose wife broke his marriage by her fornication.

Jesus says that by his act the husband forces the wife into a position that is contrary to the Sixth Commandment: 'he brings about that she is stigmatized as adulterous.'

The form moiceuqhnai is passive, and the agent of this passive is the husband.

Jesus makes this emphatic by using pouin he once for all forces his wife out of the marriage.

She who according to the commandment, ou moiceuseis, ought to be in her marriage, is now, contrary to the commandment, outside of it through the wicked action of her husband.

Dictionaries, commentaries, and translators regard moiceuqhai and also moicatai as active and they do this in the face of verse 27, 28 where we have the actives: first the future moiceuqhnai then the aorist emoiceusen.

No attempt is made to prove that the passive forms of this verb have the same sense as the active.

Yet the passive moiceuqhnai is translated 'to commit adultery' (active).

This is done by adding in parenthesis: 'he makes her to commit adultery (in case she marries again)'  But this parenthesis is untenable.

When is this woman made what Jesus says?

The moment her husband drives her out whether she marries again or not.

Even when women such as this eventually marry again, they were made moiceuqhnai the very moment they were driven out.

It ought to be plain that Jesus here scores the husband who drives out his wife.

Of what is the woman guilty?

Jesus has no indictment against her.

She is the one that is wronged; that is what the passive states, and doubly so with poiei before it.

Jesus here shows against whom this wicked husband sins: first against his innocent and helpless wife, and secondly against any man who may later on consent to marry her (hence the second passive moicatai).

...A further complication is due to our helplessness in translating this passive infinitive (also the passive moicatai) into English.

We have no passive corresponding to the active 'to commit adultery.'

But this is no justification for translating these two passives as though they were actives like the two actives in verse 27, 28.

Since our English fails us here, we must express the two passive forms as best we can to bring out the passive sense of the Greek forms.

We attempt this by translating the infinitive, 'he brings about that she is stigmatized as adulterous,' and the finite verb, 'he is stigmatized as adulterous.'

We are ready to accept a better translation but only one that keeps the passive sense of the verbs.

Nothing in the words of Jesus forbids such a woman (or, if the case is reverse, such a man) to marry again.

Such a prohibition is often assumed but is without warrant in Jesus' own words.

It is this assumption that led to the current mistranslations.

All that the passive moiceuqhnai states is that this woman has been forced into a position that appears to men as though she, too, had violated the commandment, ou moiceuseis.

She is an unfortunate woman whose marriage has been disrupted without guilt on her part.

Her wicked husband has fastened this stigma upon her.

Is is impossible for her to publish to all the world jus how she comes to be in the position forced upon her.

It ought to be apparent that here we have essentially the same case that Paul treats in 1 Corinthians 7:15.

The Jewish husband drives out his wife and thus disrupts the marriage; the Gentile husband leaves his wife and thus disrupts the marriage.

Both sunder the marriage.

Paul says, 'the sister (or if the case be the reverse; the brother) is not under bondage,' i.e., is free from the marriage which the ungodly spouse disrupted.

Exactly the same is true of the Jewish wife who is driven out by her husband.

These two are the one case not two as is quite generally assumed.

But we must stop talking about 'one' or 'two causes of divorce.'

Neither Jesus nor Paul is stating causes for divorce; neither is legislating or speaking of legal steps.

Both are dealing with the sinful acts which disrupt a marriage in violation of the divine commandment.

It ought to be a great satisfaction to see that Paul and Jesu agree in every respect, and that Paul does not add anything to what Jesus stated.

But the effect of the husband's evil act of driving out his wife affects not only the wife but also the any man who may eventually marry her.

Note the passive thn apolelumenhn, 'her that has been released or dismissed,' restating what Jesus said about the wicked act of this husband; his is the agent back of this passive participle.

The man who marries this wronged woman, he, too, moicatai, 'is stigmatized as adulterous.'

The verb moicaw is in sense identical with moiceuw.

But here again this passive should not be overlooked.

This man as little 'commits adultery' as the woman 'commits adultery.'

Neither 'commits' anything, both have had something committed upon them.

The man who marries this woman therefore shares her position.

Hence also the present durative tense moicatai: he constantly bears this stigma; he is joined to a woman whose marriage has been destroyed by her former husband.

As long as both live, this shadow will follow them.

It is thus that Jesus unfolds to his Jewish hearers in the Jewish environment in which they live the vicious affects upon the innocent when the Sixth Commandment is wickedly transgressed by rending the marriage tie."

* *

!! Matthew 19:3

The question raised here was one on which the schools of Shammai and Hillel differed.

Lenski states in The Interpretation of Matthew (pp.

727-728) "Shammai interpreted Deuteronomy 24:1 as follow:  'The man is not to release his wife unless he have found something indecent in her.'

He reverses the two Hebrew nouns /'erwath dabar/ and their grammatical relation and thus himself needs interpretation.

The LXX translate: oti eurhken en auth aschmon pragma.

Hillel allowed as a charge the fact taht in cooking the wife had burnt her husband's food; and Rabbi Akiba, referring especially to the expression, 'that she finds no favor in his eyes,' permitted her release when the husband found a better looking woman.