The Gospel of God // Christ-Centred Marriage

This passage is not therefore the full teaching of Jesus about divorce given ‘in the abstract’ to his disciples, although, like all his pronouncements, it did become a teaching occasion. It was primarily an answer to a test question,

Jesus’ affirmation of the goodness of marriage (10:1–12) is not a guideline for order within marriage

The issue was what constituted justifiable grounds for divorce, and that depended in large part on the interpretation of the vague expression in Deut 24:1, which is quite properly translated in the GNB “something about her that he doesn’t like.”

The liberal school of Hillel, however, claimed that a man could divorce his wife for anything that displeased him, even burning a meal.

Although it did not constitute God’s ultimate intention for marriage, Deut 24:1 offered some protection for the helpless wife. A husband had to go to the trouble of getting a bill of divorce drawn up and witnessed and formally presenting it to her.

the phrasing of the question in Mark (contrast Matthew) focuses not on the allowable grounds of divorce, which was a legitimate matter of current debate, but on whether divorce itself is permissible, on which as far as we know mainstream Jewish teachers of the time were agreed

The question of course envisages only a man’s right to divorce his wife; Jewish law and practice had no concept of a woman divorcing her husband, though Jesus will raise (and dismiss) that possibility also in v. 12.

not a quotation from Dt. 24, but a summary of what is assumed to be its ‘permission’. To interpret this even as permission for divorce is a matter of inference from the fact that divorce is envisaged without expressed disapproval. It certainly falls far short of a ‘command’

Among Jews, Deut 24:1–4* became the classic legal text regarding divorce in the Second Temple period and among the rabbis, although originally its point was to forbid a man to remarry a woman whom he had divorced, if she had been married to and divorced from someone else in the meantime.17 Other passages in Deuteronomy forbid divorce under certain circumstances (22:13–21*, 28–29*),18

Jesus’ question was about what ‘Moses’ commanded, and they have tried to answer him, naturally enough, from the legal material of the books of Moses. But the Pentateuch contains more than the law codes themselves, and Jesus will now go on to show how ‘Moses’ (in that wider sense) offers a very different perspective, which fits the category of ‘command’ better than the traditional legal text they have quoted.

Nevertheless, the Pharisaic group had already been forced to yield ground, if, as is probable, the change from eneteilato, command (3), the word used by Jesus in his question, to epetrepsen, allowed, the word which they use in their reply, is deliberate. They themselves do not dare to say that divorce had been commanded in the law, even if it was allowed, so they have already shown some consciousness of the weakening of their position.

This law of Moses, said Jesus, was not only as they admitted, permissive, instead of being imperative; it was actually concessive, because of the unresponsiveness of human hearts to God (hardness of heart).

its very existence showed a fatal flaw in humanity, to which Jesus drew attention.

Such language (and σκληροκαρδία in particular) is used primarily of people’s attitude towards God rather than of the way they treat each other. It thus refers here not to men’s cruelty towards their wives, but to their rebellion against God’s will for them. It is such σκληροκαρδία which has led them into divorce in the first place, and made it necessary for Moses to legislate for a situation which was never envisaged in the divine purpose.

The provision was an attempt to limit the effects of human sinfulness. Distinguishing between God’s ultimate intention for the human race, more particularly his own people, and his temporary accommodation to human inability or unwillingness to accept his high standards is important. Moses did not command or encourage divorce. He merely permitted it.

The statement that Moses “wrote this commandment for you because of your hardness of heart” (v. 5*) implies that divorce is not the will of God but was allowed by Moses only because of the people’s stubbornness. According to Fraade, Mark 10:2–9* implies that “the law of divorce was Moses’ own invention and not indicative of the divine will, and hence only a temporally-bound concession to human weakness.”82

Mosaic permission is important as a clue to what he thought was going on in his own ministry. ‘Moses gave you this rule because of your hardheartedness’; in other words, Israel in Moses’ day was not able to fulfill the creator’s intention, and needed laws that would reflect that second-best reality. Hardheartedness, the inability (to use our version of the same metaphor) to have one’s heart in tune with to God’s best intention and plan, thwarted God’s longing that Israel should be his prototype of renewed humanity. The problem was not with the ideal, nor with the law, but with the people: Israel was, when it all came down to it, just like everybody else. Hardhearted. Eager to take the precious gift of genuine humanness and exploit or abuse it.

Over against this later legal provision, Jesus sets God’s original intention as it appears in a pair of quotations from Gn. 1:27 and 2:24. These come from the ἀρχὴ κτίσεως, the period before the Fall. Jesus’ argument is expressed in terms of the temporal primacy of this provision for marriage rather than specifically in terms of the subsequent effect of sin, though it may be that ἡ σκληροκαρδία ὑμῶν is intended to remind us of what has gone wrong since God first designed human sexuality. But the main point is that this is how it was meant to be from the beginning, and first principles must take primacy over subsequent remedial provisions.

When God designed humanity as ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ it was with a view to the sexual union which Gn. 2:24 spells out. The threefold pattern of Gn. 2:24 (see Textual Note), leaving parents, union with wife, and man and woman becoming μία σάρξ, provides the essential basis for marriage, and its relevance to divorce is that the imagery of a single ‘flesh’ could hardly be more clearly designed to express that which is permanent and indivisible. It lifts marriage from being a mere contract of mutual convenience to an ‘ontological’ status. It is not merely that ‘one flesh’ should not be separated; it cannot. Jesus’ comment that οὐκέτι εἰσὶν δύο underlines this concept: they are no longer two independent beings who may choose to go their own way, but a single indivisible unit.

logic of Jesus’ quotation, or in any way modify the principle of lifelong union between man and woman as the way God intended it to be.

Just as God is inseparably one being, so he intended for a male and a female in marriage to become one being who would not be divided.

The divine ideal as seen in creation is the permanent union of a man and a woman in marriage and no divorce whatsoever.

In the speech of Jesus, “for this reason” refers to the act of God in creating humanity. It is because God made man and woman as a unit that a man shall cling to his wife.

The inviolable sanctity of the marriage tie is not of course merely based by Jesus on the bare words of Genesis 2:24, which are only a description and commentary on the result of God’s act, but on God’s initial act and purpose itself (Gen. 1:27), in creating two sexes, and so showing that this sexual union was his plan. Jesus assumes of course on the part of the Pharisees a full knowledge of the context of the Genesis passage, explaining why marriage was instituted by God for mutual companionship and support (Gen. 2:18).

Marriage is therefore the closest known human bond (one flesh), though, being human, it involves a physical bond, and its physical aspect cannot survive death (12:25). So close a bond is it nevertheless, and so deep in the purpose of God, that Paul can use it as a picture of the spiritual union that exists between Christ and his church (Eph. 5:32). Only ‘parenthood’ can be similarly used as a picture of the union between God and his people (Eph. 3:15).

The antithesis between ὁ θεός and ἄνθρωπος highlights the basis of Jesus’ rejection of divorce: it is a human decision (that of the husband, who had the right to make such a decision on his own, rather than that of a legal officer) attempting to undo the union which God has created. God’s act is expressed as a fait accompli by means of the simple aorist συνέζευξεν: once the sequence set forth in Gn. 2:24 has been undertaken, the ‘one flesh’ is a fact, not a matter of provisionality or choice. Given the recognition of Gn. 2:24 as the authoritative basis for marriage, the argument is simple and complete, and Jesus sees no need to qualify the uncompromising conclusion: marriage is for life.

The “man” of this verse is a husband and not a judicial authority.

Though in Matthew’s version of the incident, and in Paul’s discussion in 1 Corinthians 7, we find permission for divorce under certain circumstances, the present passage is not designed to give detailed case law, or discuss exceptions to the rule, but to state the rule itself as clearly as can be done.

Jesus doesn’t say Moses was wrong with the ‘permission’ in Deuteronomy; but he insists that one should go back to Genesis, to the account of creation itself, to discover the creator’s will. (Jesus and the Pharisees both assume, of course, that Moses wrote Genesis.)

Genesis is where you find the command in question. It’s quite clear: the bond of husband and wife creates not merely a partnership or a working agreement but a new entity, a new human being. And as far as Jesus is concerned, what Genesis says about marriage, God says.

Matthew (5:32a; 19:9) and Luke (16:18a)

Mark’s second statement is perhaps the most surprising, as it presupposes the possibility of the wife initiating a divorce, which was not envisaged in Jewish law, though it was in Roman.

Jewish divorce was specifically with a view to remarriage: the certificate given to the divorced wife read, ‘You are free to marry any man’ (m. Giṭ. 9:3).

Jesus’ pronouncements here therefore assume that remarriage will follow divorce, and it is the combined divorce-and-remarriage which he brands as adultery.

In that case Jesus here recognises that the wife has rights over her husband’s behaviour as well as vice versa. The divorce and remarriage is an offence not only against God’s purpose for marriage but against the wife who is thereby wronged. In the Jewish world a man could be said to commit adultery against the husband of the woman concerned, or a woman against her own husband, but the idea of adultery against the wife is a remarkable development towards equality of the sexes.

for Mark’s Jesus there is no difference at this point between men and women: if either initiates a divorce and then remarries, the result is the same, adultery.

But Mark’s Jesus offers no direct guidance on the problem, simply a clear, unequivocal, and utterly uncompromising principle that marriage is permanent and divorce (together with the resultant remarriage) is wrong. Whatever the other considerations which pastoral concern may bring to bear, some of them no doubt based on values drawn from Jesus’ teaching on other subjects, no approach can claim his support which does not take as its guiding principle the understanding of marriage set forth in vv. 9 and 11–12.

According to Jewish law, a wife could commit adultery against her husband by having relations with another man; and a man, whether or not married, could commit adultery against another man by having relations with that man’s wife. But a husband could not commit adultery against his own wife by being unfaithful to her. By insisting that a husband could commit adultery against his own wife, Jesus greatly elevated the status of wives and women in general.

The effect of Jesus’ teaching is to condemn all divorce as contrary to God’s will and to set forth the highest standards of marriage for his disciples. Christians of all eras have often fallen short of the ideal just as ancient Jews did, and there is no reason to think the same provision for human imperfection that existed in Moses’ day does not still exist today. God can forgive divorce as well as other sins. Divorce may sometimes be the lesser of two evils, but it is never pleasing to God or good in itself. It should not be looked upon by conscientious Christians as the preferred option.