Jesus and divorce.

Matthew 5.31-32, Matthew 19.3-11, Luke 16.18.

The Fundamentalist churches I grew up in, didn’t believe in divorce—because, they claimed, Jesus doesn’t believe in divorce. Their proof texts are usually today’s passages:

Matthew 5.31-32 KWL

31“We’re told,

‘Whoever divorces his woman:

Give her a divorce document.’ Dt 24.1

32I tell you:

Everyone who divorces his woman,

apart from a matter of unchastity,

makes her adulter.

And whoever might marry a divorcée,

adulters.”

Luke 16.18 KWL

“Everyone who divorces his woman

and marries another, adulters.

And one who was divorced from her man:

One who marries her, adulters.”

Hence most Fundies are pretty adamant that there’s one, and only one, reason for divorce: Πορνείας/porneías, unchastity. The KJV translates it “fornication,” and the NIV “sexual immorality.” Depending on your favorite bible translation, there are plenty of ways Fundies have found to spin what porneías means.

For most, it’s any and all nonmarital sexual activity. Sex before you’re married—porneías. Sex with anyone else while you’re married—adultery of course, and porneías. Pornography both before and during marriage: You’re looking at another person lustfully, adultering with that person in your mind, Mt 5.28 and Jesus bluntly forbids that, so that’s porneías too. Yep, porn is considered valid grounds for your spouse to divorce you. Doesn’t matter if your spouse is watching it with you.

Okay, but is our cultural definition of “sexual immorality” what the scriptures mean by unchastity?

Well, if you’re looking for me to say, “Nope!” so you can get away with stuff, I’m gonna disappoint you. Our cultural definitions, of course, aren’t the same. But they’re similar. Similar enough for there to be a bunch of overlap.

The people of Jesus’s day were still operating with a patriarchal idea of relationships between men and women. It’s an idea which in many ways is wholly inappropriate for Christians, ’cause it inherently turns women into second-class citizens, into the property of their patriarchs, and Jesus means for men and women to be equals in his kingdom. Husbands are not the masters of their wives, and any man who says so is usurping Christ Jesus’s rightful authority over his wife.

But in his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus isn’t teaching that particular lesson. He’s dealing with the culture as it was. Which isn’t our culture! So we gotta understand where they were coming from, before we can see just how this teaching applies to us.

Divorce, ancient Judean style.

First lemme remind you divorce was not forbidden by the Law of Moses. Anyone who claims “Divorce is unbiblical!” doesn’t know their bible. Divorce was allowed, and happened. Divorce is still allowed—like we just saw in today’s scripture, Jesus considers unchastity a valid reason for divorce. Elsewhere in the New Testament, Paul says if your pagan spouse wants to end things, let ’em go, and I don’t consider it a stretch to say that when we have a “Christian” who’s not following Jesus whatsoever, and has abandoned, or is mentally or physically or spiritually abusing, their spouse, Paul’s teaching applies to those instances too. Abuse is a totally valid reason for Christians to divorce.

Here’s how Moses describes divorce.

Deuteronomy 24.1 Schocken Bible

When a man takes [in marriage] a woman and espouses her,

and it happens: if she does not find favor in his eyes

—for he finds in her something of “nakedness”—

he may write for her a Document of Cutoff;

he is to place [it] in her hand

and send her away from his household.

You notice Moses says much the same as Jesus does: If a man marries a woman, he can divorce her if he finds something of “nakedness” in her. Moses regularly uses עֶרְוָה/erwá, “nudity,” as a euphemism for sexuality and unchastity, so the general idea is he can divorce her if she’s cheating on him. But Pharisees, looking for loopholes in the Law as usual, figured this could also apply to spiritual nakedness as well—and their extremely loose interpretation of spiritual nakedness pretty much meant you could divorce your woman for any reason. “If she does not find favor in his eyes” for any reason, he can write her a סֵ֤פֶר כְּרִיתֻת֙/sefér keriytút, “divorce document” (literally “book of cutting off [a marriage]”), and kick her out of his house.

Okay, but where did that leave their newly abandoned ex-wives? Well, kinda destitute. Divorce documents only declared them free of their patriarch. They didn’t give the women any financial settlement; they weren’t given any alimony; they didn’t always get their dowry back. It’s not like they could do as divorcées do in our culture, and go get a job and provide for yourself. Most were expected to simply return to their former patriarch; typically their father. But what if their father didn’t want ’em back? What if their father died, and (like Naomi in the book of Ruth) there was no former patriarch to go to? It kinda meant selling whatever resources you had—and sometimes that’s yourself, and you become a slave in someone else’s patriarchy, and all the rapey risks which came from having non-family members own you. Or you could glean nearby fields like Ruth did, and try to get by as best you could that way. And of course some women turned to prostitution; a very risky job, but still better than starvation.

Since the Law didn’t forbid polygamy, a man didn’t have to divorce his wife in order to marry someone else. He could marry as many women as he pleased. The wives might not be at all pleased with this scenario, but still: Nobody kicked out, and forced to struggle to survive on their own.

But in the first century BC and thereafter, there was a whole new cultural wrinkle to deal with: Israel was now part of the Roman Empire. And the Romans didn’t approve of polygamy. Didn’t ban it, but thought it was backwards and primitive. What Romans did, was what their gods did: Jupiter had one wife, Juno, and that’s all. Cheated on her like crazy; Jupiter had no respect for the sanctity of marriage. (Juno was the god of that, which is understandable considering her dirty slut of a husband.) But still, one wife. And whenever the Romans grew tired of their spouses, they simply divorced them and married another. The Judeans, who didn’t want Roman rule yet actually cared what the Romans thought of ’em, gradually adopted their monogamous worldview—which is why we see monogamy upheld in the scriptures as a requirement for Christian leadership. 1Ti 3.2, 5.9, Tt 1.6 Polygamy died out (and it’s probably best it did!)—but this now meant Judean men divorced their wives way more often than before, and Judean culture hadn’t yet adapted to accommodate all the new divorcées.

This is what Jesus was dealing with in his Sermon: Men who typically married in their teens, who didn’t always marry out of love—their parents paired ’em up because they figured they’d be a good or convenient match—who assumed if they later found someone they did love, they could do as the pagan Romans did, and divorce their unloved wives, then go marry their loved ones. Nevermind the impoverished, abandoned women they left behind—who’d never done anything unchaste to deserve this.

As far as Jesus is concerned, these people’s divorce documents were invalid. The woman hadn’t done anything to merit one. In God’s eyes they’re still married. Her man sent her away for no good reason—and if she takes up with anyone else, her man has made both of them, both his ex-wife and her new man, into adulterers: They shouldn’t be together, because her original man should never have sent her away.

Likewise the man who divorces his wife illegitimately, just so he can marry someone else: Jesus says it’s also adultery. Which is kind of a radical statement! Remember, the Law never forbade polygamy. Ancient Hebrews were allowed to marry someone else. Why is it adultery now? Simple: In order to get that second wife, the man drove out his first wife, and obligates her to be an adulterer if she wants to be with anyone else. Making someone else commit adultery makes you an adulterer.

(Weirdly, this means polygamy—which in the United States is illegal—is not adultery. Still, there are plenty of very good reasons to be rid of the practice, which is why Christianity made monogamy both our custom, and our requirement for Christian leadership. Let’s not bring polygamy back.)

Divorce for any reason.

American culture has pretty much gone back to the Roman point of view: Monogamy is the custom, and polygamy is considered backwards and primitive. Marriage is for those who wanna be monogamous. However if we don’t wanna be monogamous, we simply declare we’re not gonna be, and fornicate with anyone who’s okay with this—and risk the condemnation of people who uphold monogamy and marriage. And no, there aren’t fewer of those than there used to be. Far more of us recognize marriage is good and valuable—which is why lesbians and gays fought for so long to be able to marry.

For the most part, we Christians do uphold monogamy and marriage. But like the ancient Romans, lots of us are serial monogamists: We pair up, stay together as long as we’re happy together, and divorce as soon as we’re not. Then go find another partner and marry them—and repeat the process until we’re finally in a stable, happy relationship… for however long that lasts.

Most of these Christians believe same as the Fundamentalists do: Adultery (properly, unchastity; but they’ll call that adultery too) is the only valid reason for divorce. So they won’t divorce unless adultery, as they define adultery, is going on. And if it’s not… well, they’ll commit it. And figure God forgives all, ’cause he does.

But a number of these Christians will divorce, same as the Pharisees and Romans did, for any reason that works for them. They fell out of love, or “grew apart.” Or realized they married out of lust, not love, and there never actually was love, and they’re not gonna bother to practice or spark any. Or their spouse is ill-behaved, and while that’s not actually abusive, they’re gonna count it as abuse, and shouldn’t you divorce an abuser?—so they’re divorcing. And so on.

The Pharisees, who no doubt heard what Jesus taught in his Sermon on the Mount, and asked him to clarify that for them—as an orthodoxy test, obviously.

Matthew 19.3-11 KWL

3The Pharisees testing Jesus come to him, saying,

“Is it right for a person to divorce his woman

for any cause?”

4In reply Jesus tells them, “Didn’t you read

that the Creator, in the beginning,

‘makes them male and female,’ Ge 1.27

5and says, ‘This is why a person

will leave father and mother,

and stick to his woman,

and the two will become one flesh’? Ge 2.24

6Thus they’re no longer two,

but one flesh,

so whatever God joins together,

don’t let a person separate!”

7The Pharisees tell Jesus, “So why is it

Moses commands us to give her a divorce document,

and divorce {her}?”

8Jesus tells them this:

“Moses allows you to divorce your women

because of your closed-mindedness.

In the beginning, this wasn’t done.

9I tell you this:

Whoever divorces his woman,

unless unchastity is involved,

and marries another,

adulters.

{If the divorcée marries,

she adulters too.}”

10Jesus’s students tell him, “If this is the case

of a person with a woman,

it’s not better to marry.”

11Jesus tells them,

“Not everyone accepts this teaching

except those it was given to.”

Origen of Caesarea, and some of the church fathers, added the bit about “If the divorcée marries,” which is why the Textus Receptus includes it too. But older copies of Matthew don’t include it.

Jesus clearly sticks to the original intent of Deuteronomy and Genesis: Humans were never meant to divorce. We’re supposed to mate for life. Unchastity may be a valid reason for divorce—and people are pretty adamant about this, which is why Jesus describes it as σκληροκαρδίαν/sklirokardían, “hard-hearted” (which I translated “closed-minded” because the ancients believed we think with our hearts). It’s hard to remain faithful to a partner who simply won’t be faithful in return. God totally gets that; he deals with it all the time when we’re unfaithful to him. So if you have a cheating partner, God gives you an out. But again: We were never meant to divorce.

Note the reaction of Jesus’s students: If you can’t ever get out of a marriage, maybe don’t marry! Which is so very childish of them—remember, Jesus’s students were teenagers, so they would think this way. Also remember: Most of ’em grew up among Pharisees, who’d told them all their lives, “Meh, if you don’t like your first wife, later you can get another”—they’d been raised with this mindset of marriage as something you can easily get out of, and Jesus is telling them no, we’re not meant to. He’s challenging their selfishness.

Challenging everybody’s selfishness: Take marriage seriously, people! Don’t enter into it lightly. Nor try to get out of it lightly.