Does God Always Need to "Forgive" Divorce?
John 4:16-18
Jesus said to her Go call your husband and come [back] here The woman answered and said I have no husband Jesus said to her You have well said I have no husband For you have had five husbands and he who you now have is not your husband In that you answered honestly
Jesus reached out to The Woman at the Well with full knowledge of the fact that she was living in sin with a man she was not married to.
When Jesus told her to go fetch her husband, she did not bother pretending to be a respectably married woman. Her living situation was obviously common knowledge, but the gentleness with which Jesus confronted her is notable, and something Believers should learn to emulate. He did not rebuke her but rather commended her for her honesty.
Christians are commonly taught that The Woman at the Well was a divorcee. She may have been. There is no way to know. She could also have been widowed five times. But Christians are usually taught that she was “tainted” by divorce.
Assuming she was divorced, it is important to note that Jesus acknowledged each of her five marriages as legitimate by saying she had been married to five husbands. He did not suggest that she had anything to ask forgiveness for, regarding any of her five marriages … or alleged divorces.
If she had been divorced, and most Christians are taught that was the case, we should ask ourselves why one of the most common words of “comfort” to divorced people are, “God forgives divorce.” Jesus said no such thing to this woman. He acknowledged each of her husbands, as husbands, and not as men she had been living in adultery with.
The idea of sinless divorce is anathema to most Christian teaching, that asserts The Woman at the Well was a divorced woman. Even if that was the case, all divorce is not sin. There are scriptural grounds for divorce. It is a false and smugly religious position to assume that all divorce is sin and to harbor the attitude that divorced people simply did not try hard enough to save their marriages.
That’s another thing divorced Christians hear all the time, “Marriage is hard work,” implying that most marriages end in divorce because couples don’t work hard enough to save them.
Divorced Christians have so much undeserved shame heaped on them by other Christians, because of ignorant attitudes like this.
The Woman at the Well could very well have been widowed five times and, because of that, been considered anathema as a wife. Who knows?
Keeping in mind that she said she “had no husband,” could she have been “put away” by her fifth and last husband without the benefit of divorce and therefore unmarriageable due to the fact that she technically still had a husband who was refusing to be her husband. Another possibility is that she had been put away by her fifth husband who had since died, but she was not longer a part of his household.
Casting aside unwanted wives was a common practice in those, days and even before. God, through Malachi, rebuked husbands who dealt thus with their wives. God called it treacherous dealing and had harsh things to say to husbands who dealt thus with wives they grew tired of, by casting them off without setting them free to marry again.
These women, for all practical purposes, had no husbands. And this put many Jewish women in dire straits.
Many Jewish wives, who were put away but never set free from the marriage through legal divorce, were forced to live in unmarriageable legal limbo for the rest of their lives. Some married again, anyway, living as adulteresses. Another option was simply to live with a man without being married to him, bringing cruel social censure upon themselves.
Regardless of the details of The Woman at the Well’s story, the scriptures do not say “God hates divorce.” They say God hates shalachH7971, God hates the putting away, the sending away or casting off. That’s not the same as divorce.
A bill of divorce, a kerytut H3748, was not always given when a wife was cast off (shalach). A bill of divorce included a divorce settlement, something Jewish husbands had developed a bad habit of avoiding by casting off the unwanted wives of their youth without bothering to divorce them.
Shalach—casting aside—is not and cannot be considered synonymous with kerytut—divorcing. But Christians have a difficult time discerning this difference because of English-translation-theology, where Bible translators infuse their own biases and unbiblical assumptions about marriage and divorce into the Bibles they translate.
God is divorced.
The prophet Jeremiah3:8 wrote that God himself cast off Israel and then gave her a bill of divorce. When Jesus spoke to the woman at the well, he confronted her sin but commended her honesty.
Though it is commonly taught that the Woman at the Well was a divorcee, the scriptures do not record whether her previous marital statuses included divorce, widowhood, putting away, or all three.
If she had been divorced, Jesus acknowledged the legitimacy of each of her five marriages. Which means that she never committed adultery by marrying again.
Had she had been put away? Cast aside by her fifth husband, without the benefit of divorce, and therefore not eligible to marry again? Possibly.
The point is, that God does not always need to forgive divorce, because all divorce is not sin.
Jocelyn Andersen challenges the status quo with an often non-traditional and out-of-the-box approach to biblical understanding. She writes and speaks on a variety of subjects including Bible Prophecy, God and Women, and Christian response to domestic violence. Her work has been featured in magazines, newspapers, radio, and television.
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