Mark 10:1-12, CEB - Jesus left that place and went beyond the Jordan and into the region of Judea. Crowds gathered around him again and, as usual, he taught them. Some Pharisees came and, trying to test him, they asked, “Does the Law allow a man to divorce his wife?”
Jesus answered, “What did Moses command you?”
They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a divorce certificate
and to divorce his wife.”
Jesus said to them, “He wrote this commandment for you
because of your unyielding hearts. At the beginning of creation, God made them
male and female. Because of this, a man
should leave his father and mother and be joined together with his wife, and
the two will be one flesh. So they are
no longer two but one flesh. Therefore,
humans must not pull apart what God has put together.”
Inside the house, the disciples asked him again about
this. He said to them, “Whoever divorces
his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if a wife
divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
There is a lot more going on in
this passage than the casual 21st century reader would ever realize. While it seems that Jesus is a “divorce is always
wrong” guy, the context for this discussion can help us discern whether that’s
really true. What is never said (but
would have been clear to the audience) is that the Pharisees are asking Jesus
to weigh in on an ongoing debate in the Rabbinical community concerning
divorce. Rabbi Hillel, representing the
most popular camp, held that a man (and only a man) could divorce his wife for
any reason by simply giving her a certificate of divorce. In theory, this gave the woman permission to
re-marry another man. In reality, a
divorced woman in first-century Judaism was an outcast and the chances that any
man would ever consent to marry her were very slim. The “certificate” actually served to absolve
the man of any further responsibility for the woman and, at the same time,
marked the woman as “damaged goods.” This
was why Joseph, trying to save Mary from this fate, planned to “quietly divorce
her” (Matthew 1:19). He was trying to
follow Mosaic law without harming Mary.
It makes me wonder whether Jesus
and his earthly father Joseph ever had a conversation about what had happened
before Jesus was born. This is because,
Jesus, in responding to the Pharisees’ question, is displaying the same
compassion for the woman in the equation as Joseph did for Mary. The
original purpose of Moses’s declaration was to protect and care for the woman
because the men were going to discard their wives anyway. However, Moses’s law, like so many other
imperfect laws over the course of history, ironically ends up achieving the
opposite of its intention. It legitimizes
the ruining of women and gives men license to do it at will.
This is why Jesus uses non-exceptional
language in the case of divorce. He is
siding with the other Rabbi in the ongoing divorce debate, Rabbi Shammai. Shammai contended that man can divorce a
woman only on the basis of adultery. In
a culture where women have few rights, Jesus quotes the words of truth from the
Pharisees’ highly held Torah law. In
marriage, God makes the woman and man one.
To break that union is to undo what God has done. Rabbi Shammai is
closer to the truth, but Jesus cuts through and pushes beyond the debate. He raises the status of women in the process.
God does not like divorce because
it breaks up life as He desires it to be for us. It damages our soul. God allows that sometimes divorce is
necessary to prevent even greater damage than has already been caused, but
divorce doesn’t fix what is broken. Divorce
should never be taken with any allusion that it will not damage us in the same
way adultery does. That damage does not
put us beyond the restorative grace and love of God, but it is real nonetheless.
It’s crucial to note that Jesus doesn’t forbid divorce or re-marriage here; He
simply describes that there will be inevitable obstacles to overcome. Jesus Himself is the way in which such obstacles
are overcome and the broken can be restored and/or healed.
Question: How do you
understand God’s design for marriage?
Prayer: God, help us
understand Your desire for our most treasured relationships, including
marriage. Give us the ability to express
the same grace in our human relationships as You do with us. Amen.
Prayer Focus: Pray
for the marriages of people you know today.
Song: Joseph, Better
You Than Me (ft. Elton John, Neil Tennant) - The Killers
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