Ep. 79: Divorce

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MATTHEW 19:1-12, MARK 10:1-12

The teachings concerning the coming of the Kingdom came immediately afterwards. The Pharisees encountered Jesus again, now on his journey to Judea, and tried to trap him again, this time over the issue of divorce. Most Jewish teachers held that divorce was lawful, the only question being as to its grounds, but the practice was discouraged by many of the better Rabbis. To begin with, divorce was regarded as a privilege accorded only to Israel, not to the Gentiles. But on the question, what constituted lawful grounds of divorce, the schools were divided.

No real comparison is possible on this issue between Jesus and even the strictest of the Rabbis, since none of them actually prohibited divorce, except in case of adultery. But we can understand how, from the Jewish point of view, ‘tempting him’, they would put the question, whether it was lawful to divorce a wife ‘for every cause.’ The Lord appealed straight to the highest authority, God’s institution of marriage. He, who at the beginning had made them male and female, had in the marriage-relation ‘joined them together,’ to the breaking of every other, even the nearest, relationship, to be ‘one flesh’ - that is, to a union which was unity. Such was the fact of God’s ordering. It followed, that they were one and what God had willed to be one, man might not put asunder.

This is an extract from the book, Jesus : Life and Times, available for £10 here (Finalist for Academic Book of the year at 2023 CRT awards)