"For any cause"..."except for Porneia"
I was speaking to a friend on the phone in Ukraine, and as we were about to finish the conversation I said to her, "Well I think it's about time I hit the hay." She seemed confused, and I explained to her where the saying came from. We can say, "hit the hay," or "hit the sack", meaning much the same thing.
After I explained the origin of the saying, my friend made the interesting comment that without the historical background to this saying, there is no way anyone would understand it, and this is true.
The historical origin of this saying is quite simple. Possibly 150-200 years ago people in many parts of the world slept on mattresses made of sacking and filled with hay (dry grass). So to say I want to "hit the hay," or "the sack," simply means I want to fall into bed and sleep. But without the historical context of this saying, you have no idea what it means. You might imagine someone pounding hay with a stick, or punching a bag – who knows what you might think?
And this leads us into our topic for this week, Jesus teaching on divorce in the Bible. There are three very brief statements from Jesus about divorce, and a fourth which is longer, in the New Testament (NT). All of them are basically reporting Jesus entry into a debate raging in Judaism at this time. This debate forms the background of his teaching.
You know divorce is a devastating end to a marriage relationship. Anyone who has first hand exposure to divorce in some way or another, whether you were one of a divorced couple, or you know their children, or are very close friends or relatives, you will know how it can devastate families. It can cause serious health problems for either of the divorced pair, it nearly always causes financial hardship, often disruption at work, not to mention family and social issues. It is always important to understand what truth the Bible is teaching on any subject, but this subject is particularly important to understand.
What I want to suggest this morning is that the Christian Church in general has misunderstood what Jesus and the NT are teaching, precisely because of what I mentioned first about missing background information.
The understanding of most traditions in Christianity for most of the last 1,800 years is that divorce is not allowable except for adultery. There were a variety of approaches as to re-marriage after divorce. The very hard-line traditions taught that there can be no marriage after divorce at all, for either party. This was the opinion of John Piper, a Baptist Pastor and theologian.[1] While either partner is alive he disallowed remarriage. This is the most hard-line approach. This condemned both divorcees to a life of solitude, and is a most untenable position, as we shall see.
Some taught that there could be re-marriage for the “innocent” party, but deciding who is the sole "guilty" partner was the tricky part and was an interesting exercise. This was often the approach of the Adventist Church.
Some also allowed divorce and remarriage for desertion, as they understood that this was what Paul was saying in 1 Corinthians 7.
But allowing divorce only on the ground of adultery leaves a lot of circumstances in life unanswered or evidently unjust. Consider for example the man (usually it is a man) who comes home and regularly beats his wife. If we want to be politically correct (even though I don't like this approach), you could picture a woman coming home drunk every night and beating her husband, but it usually doesn't work this way!
Or consider extreme emotional abuse by one party or the other. Or consider the drunkard or drug addict (or even an addicted gambler) who destroys her family's finances and emotional well-being (I am attempting to be politically correct again!). Do you honestly think God would want these relationships to continue without intervention? In some of these cases death could be the result, or severe emotional damage to children. But what many Christian churches taught was that these untenable situations must continue because this is the way they read Jesus on divorce.
Most of Christianity came to understand that Jesus was teaching something brand new on Divorce, something against what Moses had taught. And this understanding came into Christianity very early, and by the third century it was endemic.
Moses Did Not Instigate Divorce.
Firstly, it is important to recognise that Moses did not invent divorce! It was around long before his time. The Lord directed him to institute measures to regulate divorce in a historical context where some men treated women as their possession, discarding them as they wished, then taking them back again if it suited them. The divorced woman did not know if she was Arthur or Martha, free or not, and a man who married her after was not sure if the previous relationship had finished for good.
A man would turn a woman out of his house and she often had little option but to marry again if she wanted to survive. Then sometimes the man would sober up and decide she was not so bad after all and come to confront the new husband, saying, "Hey this is my wife, what are you doing?" So, this is one of the many situations Moses sought to address with the law God gave.
It is interesting that many of the same circumstances were apparent in the time of Jesus, 1,300 years after Moses, when the Pharisees came to him with their question in Matthew 19.
But let's look at Moses teaching first.
Deut. 24:1-4 “If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, …4 then her first husband, who divorced her, is not allowed to marry her again…”
The first thing we should understand is that this is an instance of Case Law. That is, the literary genre is Case Law, and so it is written in a certain truncated style and with certain parameters that lay the groundwork for applying the principles to as many different situations in life as possible. A huge amount of background information was left out in order to make this very brief statement to summarise the central part of this law. It was truncated in this way so it could be easily memorised in order to pass it on orally or in order to write the legal essentials down. The finer details in a Case Law article, which were not all written down, were meant to be understood and included in the reckoning of each case by at least the teachers of the law, if not by the average person.
God’s aim through Moses' law was to raise the status of women among his covenant people. The Certificate of Divorce was proof that the marriage had ended and the two parties were free to consider their future independently. The old husband had no further claim on the woman, and a new man was free and innocent to approach her. One very important point is that both parties were free to remarry. One was not called the “guilty” party, and the other the “innocent” party, with different rules applying to each after the marriage ended. After the divorce both parties were permitted to remarry. The central part of the Divorce Certificate said clearly, "you are free to any man."
Jesus and Moses
This was Jesus' understanding of Moses' teaching as well. The evidence for this is that the circumstances and even the words used in Jesus' discussion of divorce are remarkably similar to those that Moses used in his statement. This is important because it shows that Jesus was not contradicting Moses' law. For example, the Hebrew word translated as “something indecent” in Deuteronomy has a very similar meaning to the Greek word Jesus used in Matthew 19, “porneia”, translated as “marital unfaithfulness” in many English Bibles. In both instances the meaning is rather open-ended, although it has strong sexual associations. After all, it is the word from which we get our word 'pornography'. Let's now look at the debate over this text within Judaism, recorded in Matthew.
Matt. 19:3-9
3 Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”
4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”
7 “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”
8 Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9 I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness (porneia), and marries another woman commits adultery.”
The Pharisees had brought a question to Jesus to settle that was in hot debate between two Rabbinical schools. We know this clearly because the issues are recorded in the Talmud, a history and commentary on the Bible. The conservative school of Shammai said the man could divorce his wife if he found she had been unfaithful, interpreting Moses words “something objectionable about her” or "a matter of indecency" as meaning unfaithfulness or adultery. The liberal school of Hillel claimed a man could divorce his wife if she spoiled the cooking, and a later Rabbi said that even if her looks did not please him anymore he could dispose of her. Because the Hillelites were focussing on Moses' phrase, "she does not please him," while the Shammaites focussed on the phrase "something objectionable." Hence the words used by the Pharisees to Jesus, “for any and every reason”, which, it is important to note, was quoting Hillel's position.
But at first Jesus avoided their question and directed their minds back to the ideal at creation, where a man and a woman were given the blessing of becoming “one flesh”, or having a many-sided union, including a sexual union in marriage. Jesus was here shifting the debate to things he considered more important.
Jesus was actually teaching many things here. Two things he is teaching here, which many people today miss, but which his contemporaries would pick up on immediately, are these:
1. By stressing that God made one female and one male, and that the two shall become one flesh he was sidelining polygamy.
2. And by calling them one flesh and saying that God had joined them, he was saying that marriage was meant to be lifelong.
This was hitting the Pharisees where it hurt. Polygamy was accepted in the ancient world but had already started to come under attack within Judaism by Jesus time. They were not to mess with God's original intentions, and they were not to play with women like a toy.
I believe he was also suggesting that the Pharisees had the cart before the horse. Getting the legal paperwork right in a divorce was not the big issue. The marriage effectively ends when the couple separate. Every separated couple understands this, even if the church does not. When you separate from your wife or husband, the threefold reason for marriage, suggested in Genesis, ends.
1. Companionship. "It is not good that man should be alone." Genesis 2:18.
2. Mutual help. In Eve, God created "an help meet” for Adam (Genesis 2:20). She was a complimentary, or suitable, helper.
3. Sexual satisfaction. He created them male and female (Genesis 1:27), and they became one flesh (Genesis 2:24).[2]
Jesus knew this. He was saying the sin is not the divorce, but the separation. No companion to share with, no helper to stand beside you in life, no sex – no marriage. It's that simple! The divorce is just tidying up the legal side of things. The main thing for Jesus, as always, was the spirit of the law, not the letter. It’s what happens between you and God that is the most important point.
That is paramount. Technically complying with society's legal requirements is not enough.
But the Pharisees insisted on bringing him back to the raging contemporary debate, They said, “Yeah, but what about Moses commanding us to divorce a woman in the case of a matter of indecency?” When Jesus replied that Moses did not command but permitted divorce because their hearts were hard, he was suggesting that if their hearts were not hard they could actually forgive their spouse and continue the marriage. Even if a partner has committed adultery, it is permissible, and even desirable, to forgive them if they are repentant. Adultery creates a ground for divorce, but it does not create a necessity of divorce. We do not have to go down that path.
In Jewish society at this time it was pretty well mandatory that a man divorce his wife if she was unfaithful. "Unfaithfulness" could simply mean a woman who was seen with a man in public more than once, or even speaking to a man, because, you see, they might be planning an illicit sexual encounter!
But the tables were not the same on the other side. It was very difficult for the man to commit adultery, because he was free to take a second wife, or even take a slave woman as a concubine and not be seen to be committing adultery. He did not even promise to be faithful to a woman upon marriage, but she had to promise this to him. So the conditions for men and women were radically different in the ancient world. This is one thing Jesus set out to change, and change it he did, as you see in our contemporary Western Christian world.
But actually, Jesus is definitely not here speaking of adultery as the only reason which allows for divorce. There were at least three other reasons for divorce given in the Older Testament, and if Jesus had wanted to make a big change to Moses law, he would have to say it very clearly, but here he is silent on the other grounds for divorce. This is a debate over Moses specific law on divorce for some sort of unfaithfulness, and Jesus is entering the debate on this particular issue, which was raging at the time, and he is not addressing all reasons for divorce.
The word he uses is 'pornea' (πορνείᾳ) in Greek, which is where we get our word pornography. But the word has quite an open meaning, just like the word Moses used in Hebrew, and in this context I think a better translation for both would be “something very serious or objectionable sexually”.
Jesus was suggesting that if you divorce a partner for a trivial reason to marry another, it is tantamount to adultery. In the spirit of the matter it is adultery, because all you want is a new partner. There was nothing seriously wrong with the old model. He was saying, "An easy, any reason, divorce is not on!" Jesus was basically siding with Shammai in this debate and condemning Hillel's easy divorce.
If Jesus can forgive the woman caught in adultery, and if he can forgive another woman he bumped into at a well – a woman who had been divorced from five husbands and was presently living with a boyfriend, then it is not divorce or even adultery that is the main problem here. The bigger problem here is that a prominent wing of Judaism, calling themselves believers and claiming to be teachers of the law, are treating his law like Plasticine, pushing it into the shape that suited their lifestyle. This was the sin Jesus was attacking.
When we compare the historical situation which Moses was directed to address, with the situation Jesus was asked to settle, it becomes clear that many of the circumstances were similar. We find Jesus with no objection to Moses at all, and in fact using very similar principles, and close to identical word choice to Moses, only in Greek rather than Hebrew, when stating the grounds for divorce. And it is important to note that here in Matthew and other instances in the New Testament, the genre is Case Law. It is a truncated, bare-bones statement, the interpretation of which must be cognizant of the historical and cultural context.
What Jesus is saying here should not be taken out of context. The social and religious context is a debate between two Rabbinical schools. Jesus answers the question by coming down more on the side of the conservative Shammai, that there must be a very serious problem to cause a divorce. Jesus is at pains to raise the status of women in his society by abolishing polygamy and suggesting marriage was lifelong, and giving women and men absolute clarity in the historical social situation, just as Moses had done in his day.
Key Legal Terms
The key phrases used in this debate, the Hillelite "any and every reason", and the Shammaite except for indecency, would be well known by a large proportion of the Jewish population because they were the basis of divorce law. These legal phrases would have been as well known as similar legal phrases today, such as "irreconcilable differences," "decree absolute," "joint custody," and "maintenance." If I say these phrases to someone from another culture, they would most likely not understand what I was on about. This is because they are legal terms that only insiders comprehend.
If I mention the legal term maintenance in a discussion about divorce, do you think I am speaking about the maintenance of my car? No. And if I speak about joint custody you know that I am speaking about the children in a divorce case. And when the term any cause was mentioned in a discussion on divorce in Jesus' day, everybody knew it meant the Hillel version of easy divorce.
First-century Jewish readers would have mentally inserted the phrase "for any matter" into the question that the Pharisees asked Jesus, whether or not it occurred in the text, even though it is not included in the other very truncated instances in Matthew 5, Luke and Mark. They would have left these phrases out because they knew their audience was familiar with the debate. People understood that the question made no sense without inserting these. The question "Is it lawful to divorce a wife?" was easily answered, "Yes, of course, it says so in the Law."
If someone asked in a modern church context, "Do you believe in the Second Coming?" there would be no necessity to add the phrase "of Jesus Christ." But if I walk out on the street here and ask the same question, "Do you believe in the Second Coming?" people would look at me strangely and say, "The second coming of who, Arnold Schwarzenegger?"
These phrases were removed when the debate was summarised for oral or written transmission. The phrases "any matter" and "except for indecency" were the phrases that encapsulated the positions of the Hillelites and Shammaites respectively, in their debate about the meaning of Moses' phrase "something objectionable", in Deuteronomy 24:1.
Forgiveness was not Negated in the Case of Divorce Alone
Jesus gave his life as a sacrifice to offer forgiveness to anyone who is genuinely repentant – however grave the sin. But he will not tolerate privileged groups playing with the law or toying with vulnerable people. He was more concerned with reminding the Pharisees that marriage was meant to be monogamous and lifelong.
Herman Ridderboss put it this way,
Jesus “shows that those who determine their ethical attitude by what is possible and permissible by virtue of civil legislation (…divorce), shirk God’s radical demand with respect to their lives.”[3]
Other Grounds Were Universally Accepted
Jesus is not here laying down a blanket ruling for all marriage breakdowns and grounds for divorce. He is not saying that divorce can only ever take place in the case of adultery. We know this because he was silent about the other grounds of divorce which were accepted by all parties in Judaism.
They are recorded in Exodus in another instance of Case Law, concerning the stipulations of marriage. In order to keep this record of law as concise as possible the instance given was concerning a man taking a slave woman as his wife. It says in effect that ...a second wife should not be preferred over a first wife even when the first wife was a slave wife.
Exodus 21:7-11
The logic here is that if such stipulations applied to a slave wife, it would most certainly apply to any wife. In this passage are several stipulations about marriage, which may sound very strange to us today, but which actually elevated the status of the Israelite woman well above those of other cultures around Israel. The list of these rights in Exodus 21:10, is the right to food, clothing, and conjugal (sexual or love) relations.
These became the grounds of divorce if the marriage deteriorated to an untenable situation. In Israel, only the husband could divorce the woman, but in many situations the wife could ask or force her husband to divorce her.
Verse 11 says that if the man neglected these basic requirements of food, clothing or sexual relations (of course it had to be a very serious situation), the woman could leave the marriage and retain her dowry and pay no fine. She was innocent and free.
The Rabbis usually combined the first two into material provisions and described the last as emotional provisions. So the last was often interpreted as emotional love, including sexual love.
There are three factors that suggest that Jesus recognised the other Old Testament grounds for divorce.
The first factor is that Jesus remained silent about these other grounds during this debate about divorce, even though he chose to disagree strongly with other opinions not mentioned by the Pharisees in this debate. Jesus took the trouble to bring up several other matters relating to marriage and divorce in which he differed with Judaic opinion.
The second factor is that everyone would assume that Jesus recognised that there were other Old Testament grounds for divorce because this was a universally held view. None of the other areas that Jesus addressed were universally held in first-century Judaism.
Among the many and disparate groups within Judaism one could find Jews who would agree with Jesus' teachings on monogamy, lifelong marriage, optional divorce, forgiveness for unfaithfulness except in cases of stubbornness, optional marriage, the invalidity of divorce for infertility, and, of course, the invalidity of the "any and every reason" divorce. In contrast, there was no group in first-century Judaism that rejected the grounds for divorce in Exodus 21:10-11.
If Jesus had wanted to teach a rejection of the grounds for divorce in Exodus 21:10-11, he would have had to say so very clearly, and because he said nothing about them, we can (correctly) assume that, like all other Jews, he accepted them.
To give one example, Jesus nowhere explicitly allowed remarriage after the death of a spouse, but we assume that he did allow this because all Jews, including Paul, clearly allowed it. [4]
The third factor that indicates that Jesus accepted the grounds for divorce in Exodus 21:10-11 is the almost perfect parallel between the wording of Jesus' exception clause and the Shammaite ruling in the divorce debate. By reversing the Hebrew OT words of Moses, in the identical way that the Shammaites did, he was effectively quoting them.
And since the Shammaites recognised the other grounds for divorce, like all Jews, Jesus would have had to specifically disagree with these other grounds, and he did not. [5]
Summary of Jesus' Teaching Here
When the arguments are unpacked from their abbreviated form, we find that Jesus was teaching seven separate matters:
1. Marriage should be monogamous. Here Jesus was agreeing with the Qumran community. This made polygamy untenable for Christians and made it possible for the woman to divorce a man if he was unfaithful in this or other ways.
2. Marriage should be lifelong.
3. Divorce is never compulsory. Forgiveness is always possible.
4. Divorce should be avoided unless the erring partner stubbornly refuses to repent.
5. Marriage is optional. You can remain single if you wish. This was not possible in Judaism before this time because they understood that God was commanding them to produce children.
6. Hillelite "any matter" divorces are invalid. Here Jesus was agreeing with the Shammaites that divorce was only acceptable on the grounds of serious offences.
7. By not challenging the other universally accepted grounds for divorce in Moses (Ex. 21:10-11), about material provisions and emotional provisions, Jesus was agreeing with these.
Conclusion
The historical context here is a debate on a hot issue in first-century Judaism, which Jesus was asked to adjudicate. This he did but in his inimitable and sometimes enigmatic style. However, in this instance the enigma is due to the particular literary style used to record it, that of Case Law. Jesus was addressing a particular evil in his day, which was also prevalent in Moses' day – the practice of divorcing a blameless wife for trivial reasons to marry a new one. He was not changing Moses' law but intensifying it to include spirit and motive. He was not giving us a blanket ruling on divorce to cover all situations. And the situation in the western world today has many differences from the ancient world than those portrayed here in Matthew.
Where a serious and genuine breakdown develops in a marriage, involving some indecent or seriously objectionable fault, and where there is no hope of forgiveness and reconciliation, then divorce is permitted by the law God gave through Moses. And Jesus teaching here accords with Moses.
Jesus' burden was to teach us to forgive. But marriages involve two inherently imperfect individuals, and some are bound to break down irretrievably. Scripture does not teach that when this happens these individuals should be forced to live single lives until death, or until one “commits adultery” by remarrying. We are not to create a second unpardonable sin.
1 John 1:7-9
“7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. ... 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
[1] Divorce & Remarriage: A Position Paper
[2] Ibid., p.
[3] The Coming of the Kingdom, p. 308
[4] David Instone Brewer, Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible: the social and literary context. This title is extremely helpful on this subject and as a background for marriage and divorce in the ancient social context.
[5] Ibid., 2101
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