Hello everyone,
While
I’ve received many ‘thank you’ emails concerning last Friday’s
‘Thoughts’ concerning tzedakah and Jesus’ comments on divorce, there
were also many people asking specific information unique to their
situation or unique to what they’ve been taught.
So
I thought it would be good to go into deeper context which should cover
most questions for those who have them, and provide a deeper
understanding for all. Here again is the Jewish divorce law:
“When a man marries a wife, and it comes to pass she has no more favor in his eyes because he has found some uncleanness in her,
let him write her a bill of divorce and give it to her and send her out
of the house. And when she has left the house she may go and become
another man’s wife. But if the second husband hates her, let him give
her a bill of divorce and send her out, or if the second husband die
(she may become another man’s wife). But her first husband may not take
her again as his wife for she has since been another man’s wife…”
Deuteronomy 24:1-4
No
one knew what exactly the phrase ‘some uncleanness in her’ meant, and
by the time of Malachi the priests were not walking with the Lord and
doing many abomonimable things ranging from offering for sacrifice the
weak, sick, and too old to be productive animals, the worst of the grain
and so forth, and refusing to tithe and give offerings.
They
also took a very liberal view of ‘uncleanness’ and used it to marry and
divorce at will. It is in Malachi 2:14-16 the Lord rebukes the priests
for dealing ‘treacherously’ with the ‘wives of your youth’ and He states
He hates divorce.
Unfortunately
some have taken that one statement that He hates divorce to mean a
doctrinal statement against all divorce, which doesn’t even stand up to
logic since He was the one who gave the Law to Moses at the start. When
you add in the fact that God is divorced, stating He gave Israel the
bill of divorcement in Jeremiah 3:8 among other places, AND that Jesus
would later state why God gave divorce due to the hardness of men’s
hearts as a way of escape for the innocent spouse, it all makes sense.
He does hate divorce – as the priests in Malachi were using it, marrying and divorcing at will.
When
we come to Jesus’ day there were 2 men who He probably knew; respected
Rabbi’s, one named Shammai and the other Hillel. The debate in Jesus’
day had only intensified in the 400 years since Malachi was used of the
Lord to rebuke the corrupt priests of his day.
Shammai
taught that the wording of the law of divorce, ‘some uncleanness in
her’ of Deuteronomy 24, was a reference to 2 chapters earlier in the law
of marrying a virgin. Deuteronomy 22:13-18 states that if a man takes a
wife and ‘goes in unto her’ and finds he hates her, because on their
wedding night he discovered she was not a virgin as she had claimed, he
could divorce her or even have her stoned to death if he wished to press
charges.
Incidentally,
when Mary confessed to Joseph she was with child, he considered this
very law, but scripture says ‘he was a good man’ and only sought a quiet
divorce. Had he wished, he could have pressed charges and had Mary
executed.
But
in Deuteronomy 22, if the woman was indeed a virgin she could bring out
the bed sheets from their wedding night, still covered in blood and
body fluids, to prove her hymen was broken that night and she indeed a
virgin. The custom was that she would keep these sheets, called ‘the
tokens of her virginity’ all her life, for even if 30 years later in
marriage, if the husband slandered her or made accusations about their
early life together, she had the means to defend her honor.
And
so Shammai taught that Deuteronomy’s ‘uncleanness’ in the divorce law
was a reference to two chapters earlier, and if a man divorced his wife
except for fornication (sex with another man) before the wedding, it
would be an unjust divorce, causing her to commit adultery as a
classification of her next marriage, and the husband who unjustly
divorced her and remarried, would be in an adulterous marriage – one
founded upon unjust and morally illegal grounds.
Rabbit
Hillel however, who died in the year 30AD, prevailed however, and
taught if the wife cooked a bad meal that rose to the level of
‘uncleanness’ of Deuteronomy 24, and a husband could therefore divorce
her and remarry at will – Rabbi Akiva even said if the husband found
another woman more beautiful than his wife, her declining beauty rose to
the level of ‘some uncleanness’ as well, and he could divorce her just
because he wanted a prettier wife.
THAT
was the argument Jesus was brought into. Therefore when Jesus said in
Matthew 5:31-32 what He said, He was talking about Hillel and Akiva’s
law, which was the law of the day:
“It
has been said, ‘Whoever wants to divorce his wife, let him simply give
her a bill of divorce and send her away.’ But I say to you (referring
back to Shammai and Deuteronomy 24’s original intent) That whoever
divorces his wife except for fornication, causes her to commit adultery,
and whoever marries her commits adultery.”
He
is talking about the original intent God meant in Deuteronomy 24,
confirming Rabbi Shammai’s teaching that it reference chapter 22, just a
few verses earlier, talking about a woman who claimed to be a virgin
but was found to have already had sex with someone else before her
wedding. In that case, Jesus said the divorce would be legal, but if for
any other reason, the category of relationship would be adultery as it
would have been an unjust divorce.
Because
Hillel’s law was THE law of the land, the priests and leaders did not
like that – and when pressed for the reason God gave the law of divorce
in the first place if His intent was for husband and wife to be together
all their lives, Jesus said it was due to the hardness of men’s hearts.
And
that included, even in Jesus’ day, fornication, abuse, neglect,
abandonment – as per last Friday’s Weekly Thoughts on the subject.
Now
time for my opinion – Because Christians and indeed most pastors, don’t
know the context of Jesus’s statements, even though they were all
taught in Bible school that the first rule of interpretation of the
Bible is to understand who it was spoken/written to, and how they
understood it, and that any further understanding in our day must agree
with and build upon their understanding – they’re guilty of trapping in
condemnation God’s people when God Himself has provided divorce as a way
of escape out of a broken covenant – broken by hard hearts resulting in
fornication (sex outside of marriage), abuse, neglect, or abandonment.
There
is a lot of bad teaching out there. I’ve been asked on a couple of
occasions to agree in prayer with a heart-broken ex-wife of some man,
that he would come back to her even though he is now remarried. In a
couple of situations the divorce occurred some 10 years earlier and the
husband remarried and had 2 kids of his own with his 2nd wife, but the wife who came for prayer wanted me to pray God would break up his 2nd marriage to bring him back to her.
Each
time they had been taught ‘God hates divorce’ and that a covenant
though broken by 1 party, was still in effect and could be prayed for to
be made a whole covenant again. I’ve had the sad duty to inform these
women that the only part of the covenant that remains between her and
her ex husband, is their children, and in that element of their covenant
of marriage, they still must cooperate as they were born of that
covenant, though now broken.
But
God won’t break up marriage #2 to get hubby back with wife #1. The good
news from Deuteronomy 24, let us not lose sight of that, is that it
provides for her (or him) to marry a 2nd and even a 3rd
time – again, divorce used with the intent God gave it, is to allow the
innocent spouse to escape from a broken covenant and rebuild their
lives.
I hope this addendum helps answer questions – blessings!
John Fenn
www.cwowi.org and email me at cwowi@aol.com
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