It has been said whoever shall dismiss his wife let him give her a divorce But I say to you that whoever shall dismiss his wife except for the cause of sexual sin causes her to commit adultery [if she marries again without a divorce—re: verse :31] and whoever shall marry her that has been dismissed [without divorce] [also] commits adultery
Comments: Matthew 5:31-32 The problem of men discarding wives at their leisure without divorcing them was rampant in Israel. In verse thirty-one, Jesus spoke to the Traditions (oral and written commentaries on the Torah) which allowed men to set wives aside, for any reason. But despite both Torah and the Traditions commanding husbands not to set wives aside without giving them a lawful divorce, husbands discarded wives at leisure, frequently without divorcing them, which, in that culture, left women in marital limbo and often destitute, unless they had independent means, family to take them in, or ruined their moral reputations by finding other men willing to provide for them. This could have been the situation with The Woman at the Well.
Re: Torah, Jesus reminded men to give unwanted wives divorces—which would have included some kind of provisional material/financial settlement.
God moved the prophet Malachi to rebuke husbands for dealing treacherously with wives in this way. Men dealt treacherously with aging wives by setting them aside to take younger ones. Malachi specifically referenced the “wives of their youth,” which meant that neither the treacherous husbands nor the abandoned wives were young.
Nowhere in scripture are men permitted to abandon faithful wives by turning them out into the cold without means.
Jesus threw a further fly into the ointment by saying men were not permitted to divorce their wives at all for just any reason. The men he was speaking to had always been taught, by misogynistic spiritual leaders, that they could discard undesirable wives for any reason at all, even something as trivial as they didn’t like their cooking.
Jesus rocked the unfair and unscriptural male-privilege-boat by saying that unless sexual sin was involved, husbands were not permitted to divorce their wives at all.
This afforded heretofore unknown protection for women, which left the men of that day astounded. In one of the other gospels, his disciples were so aghast at this, they questioned the wisdom of getting married at all.
Jocelyn Andersen is the author of several non-fiction books, including, Woman this is WAR: Gender, Slavery, and the Evangelical Caste System.
Note from the editor: I read my Bible every day, always picking up today where I left off yesterday. This is what I call my “on-track” Bible reading. I have been doing this for over 44 years. The posts in this column are usually notes on whatever passage I happen to be reading on any particular day. If you are not presently doing the same, I invite you to join me, beginning with where I’m at. How much you read on a daily basis isn’t important. It only matters that you read, feeding your spirit with a prayerful daily dose of the Word of God.
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Read more about this commentary HERE.