and said, On account of this a man shall leave father and mother, and shall be united to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh?
The Pharisees asked Jesus whether a man may divorce his wife. He did not argue law with them. He answered with the words spoken over the first marriage, and that raises the real questions here: who said them, what leaving and holding fast require, and whether "one flesh" can ever be undone.
The sentence Jesus quotes comes from Genesis, at the close of the account of Eve's creation. Readers have long asked whether Adam or Moses said it. The way the Lord introduces the quotation settles it.
It may also be noticed that the Lord Jesus (Matt. 19:4-5) attributes to God the words quoted from Gen. 2:24: "He who made them … said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother,'" and so on. It was Moses who wrote it: but it was God speaking none the less.
Jesus does not answer from Moses' rule about a certificate of divorce. He reaches further back, to what God set up before any law.
The Lord goes back behind the law to God's original institution: "He who made them at the beginning … From the beginning it was not so." So Christ's authority restores God's natural order. That order is the relationship He formed, and the origin of all other human relationships. He returns to God and God's institution of man. It is not Jehovah, it is not "my Father," but God made them — a very important principle. The law takes its place as something provisional, brought in along the way.
The verse begins with a departure. Marriage changes which relationship comes first in a person's life.
Before a man marries, the chief relationship he stands in is that of a son, and his responsibility is towards his parents. But when he marries he leaves his father and mother and holds fast to his wife. From then on she becomes his chief care, for he and she are no longer two but one flesh.
The second half of the verse says what the man does after leaving. Holding fast settles several practical questions.
God's order in creation is clear. So it was right that a man should leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife. This verse settles many questions. First, when marriage takes place, the man (or woman) is no longer in the place of subjection to parents. Second, he holds fast to his wife — only one wife. So bigamy and polygamy are completely against Scripture. Holding fast to his wife means genuine love for her, faithfulness and devotion.
Being "one flesh" is why the Lord goes on to forbid separating what God has joined. One writer explains why even unfaithfulness makes no real exception to that bond.
He establishes, or rather re-establishes, the true character of marriage as a bond that cannot be dissolved. I call it that, because the exception in the case of unfaithfulness is not really one. The guilty person had already broken the bond.
God joined the two, so no one on earth may separate them. That puts this verse at odds with much modern practice.
The two are then recognised before God as being "one flesh." It is God Himself who has joined the two together. Therefore no man has authority to divorce them. Governments today of course ignore God's decree in this matter, but the word of God will not change to suit men's preferences.
Paul quotes this same sentence again when he writes to the Ephesians. There it reaches past husbands and wives.
Again, the application to Christ and the church can be made. Christ, as man, gave up what was His by relationship to His earthly people, Israel, to gain and have the church. Paul quotes this verse in Ephesians 5:31 … So the marriage bond becomes the picture of the union of the church with Christ.
Some might say a word spoken in a sinless garden cannot govern a spoiled world. The terms of the verse itself answer that.
He who made the man and the woman regulated the relationship from the first. Later things went out of course. Then the Lord, who made everything perfect, cleared the relationship of that concession which man had abused, and called it back to its original order. This is all the more striking because God ruled it so. He did not rule it only for the short-lived state of innocence in paradise, but as His mind for man on the earth at any time. The terms prove it.
- Maker speaks — the words come from the One who made them male and female; Moses wrote them, but God said them.
- Beginning rules — Jesus steps behind Moses' concession to the original order. The law was only provisional.
- Leaving first — marriage ends the parents' first claim; the wife becomes the husband's chief care.
- Holding fast — one wife, held with love, faithfulness and devotion; bigamy and polygamy have no ground here.
- One flesh — God joined them, so no man may separate them; and this same union pictures Christ and the church.
so that they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.
The Pharisees, the religious teachers of the day, asked Jesus how easily a man could divorce his wife. He answered by going back to the day God made the first man and woman, which raises the real question: who does the joining, and what may man undo?
The Pharisees framed the debate around Moses and what he permitted. Jesus refused to argue on that ground and went further back.
The Lord goes back behind the law to God's first institution: "He who created them from the beginning… from the beginning it was not so." So Christ's authority restores God's natural order. That order is the relationship He formed, and it is the source of every other human relationship. He returns to God and to God's institution for man. The name used is God — not "the Lord," not "my Father" — and that is an important point. The law came later, as a temporary measure.
Moses wrote both the permission to divorce and the account of the first marriage. The two do not carry equal weight.
The first was a provision "for the hardness of their hearts." Men no doubt often used it without the reason Moses required: "because he has found some indecency in her" (Deut. 24:1). The second (Gen. 2:24) taught the sacredness and the real character of the tie.
The verse does not say the couple joined themselves. It says God joined them, and that decides who may undo it.
The two are then recognized before God as being "one flesh." It is God Himself who has joined the two together. Therefore man has no authority to divorce them. Governments today of course ignore God's decree in this matter, but the word of God will not change to suit men's preferences. From the beginning God meant marriage to bind two people for as long as both are alive.
Because the joining is God's, no human office can perform it or claim credit for it.
A minister may pronounce a couple man and wife "on behalf of the church." That is simply wrong. Neither the true church of God nor the churches of men have any authority over marriage… When God joins, He does so without the help of any man.
The phrase is not poetry about feelings. It draws practical lines around the relationship.
God set a clear order in creation. So it was right that a man should leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife. This verse settles many questions. First, when marriage takes place, the man (or woman) is no longer in the place of subjection to parents. Second, he holds fast to his wife — one wife only, so bigamy and polygamy have no place in Scripture. Holding fast to his wife means real love for her, faithfulness and devotion.
Commentators do speak of one exception. They explain it as sin having already destroyed the "one flesh."
Where someone sinned against the relationship, it was not really an exception. By then the one man and one woman had stopped being one flesh, because a human will had cut across God's. Sin broke the bond.
Apart from that, the bond holds. What makes it hold is where it came from, not who entered it.
God's will is that marriage cannot be broken… This is true not only of marriages between believers, but of every marriage.
Marriage began in God. So the same God who started it meets the strains that push couples apart.
Why should a person's circumstances, failures, the difficulties along the way, incompatibility or anything else interfere with what came from the heart of God? … Couples will find that the love which first gave us marriage can hold them up.
- God joins. The verse names who acts: not the couple, not the state, not a minister. God Himself joined them, without any human help.
- God's order. Jesus stepped past Moses to creation. The law's permission was temporary; the beginning is the standard.
- God makes one. "One flesh" ends the child's place under parents, rules out more than one spouse, and calls for love and faithfulness.
- God binds. The union cannot be broken. Where the Lord names an exception, sin had already broken the bond — no one's decision did.
- God sustains. The love that first gave marriage carries a couple through failure, hardship and difference.
They say to him, Why then did Moses command to give a letter of divorce and to send [her] away?
The Lord has just said that no one may break the marriage God joined. The Pharisees answer with a text of their own. If marriage is that binding, why did Moses let a man end it with a written certificate? Their question sounds like careful Bible study. It is a trap. The Lord's answer shows what the law of Moses really said, and what it never claimed to be.
They reach for Moses as a weapon against Christ. It backfires.
The Pharisees try to quote Moses against the Lord. But He at once shows them that Moses condemned them, not Him. Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, allowed a man to send his wife away. He never commanded it. Here, as on another occasion, Moses does not defend them. He becomes their accuser and judge. "There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope" (John 5:45). It is always a dangerous thing for a sinner to take his stand on the law. The law can only expose and condemn him. It has no power to pardon and forgive.
Their whole objection rests on one word they have slipped in: "command."
In verse 7 they say, "Why then did Moses command?" and so on. He did nothing of the sort. He gave liberty, but never commanded, so the Lord takes them up and says he "allowed you." Moses allowed it to prevent worse sin, because hearts were hard… But God hated this divorcing.
Moses gave commands as well as allowances. The Pharisees quoted only the allowance.
In their reply they sought to turn aside the Lord's question by speaking, not of what Moses commanded, but of what Moses allowed. In doing so they unknowingly exposed the hardness of their hearts. They neglected the positive commands of Moses, and speak only of special rules set up to meet their own hardness. The commands met God's heart for man; the rules about divorce were to meet their hearts.
The text they lean on is Deuteronomy 24:1. It protected the wife, not the husband.
The Pharisees also thought they could prove the Lord wrong by referring to Deuteronomy 24:1. There Moses, the lawgiver, gave an instruction. If a man had found some uncleanness in his wife, he could give her a bill of divorcement and send her away. The bill of divorce guarded the wife against cruel treatment. Without it, a man could discard her and still leave her unable to marry anyone else.
Writing out such a document also slowed a man down. The Morrish Bible Dictionary calls it "some little check upon a man's hasty temper."
Behind the question lay a live quarrel between two schools of Jewish teachers.
Two great opinions divided the Pharisees about divorce. Some held the views of Hillel and others the views of Shammai. Hillel had taught that a husband may send his wife away for almost any cause… The school of Hillel taught this openly, and lived by it: if a wife cooks her husband's food badly, by over-salting or over-roasting it, her husband is to send her away. The school of Shammai, followed by other Pharisees, allowed divorce only for adultery. This sheds more light on the temptation these Pharisees put before Him.
Some things stood in the law because of what people were, not because of what God wanted.
Moses allowed certain things that were not according to God's original design. Nor should this surprise us, for the law made nothing perfect. It was good in itself, but it could not make anyone good… Some concessions in the law did not express the divine mind at all. In them God was dealing with a people after the flesh. The law does not view a man as born of God; Christianity does… So our Lord made some allowance for Israel's condition in the flesh. At the same time He defended God's law from the corrupt conclusions of these selfish Pharisees.
Many assume law is strict and grace is easy. Here it runs the other way.
Moses had allowed this because of the hardness of their hearts, but from the beginning it was not so. How clearly this shows that the law itself was not at all the expression of God's heart! In this case law was more permissive than the grace of God is! For grace enables one to rise above difficulties in a way that law could never do.
- Misquoted. Moses never commanded divorce. The Pharisees added that word to make a permission look like an order.
- Permitted. The certificate protected the discarded wife and slowed a husband's temper.
- Exposed. The concession existed because hearts were hard. The text they quoted in self-defence became the evidence against them.
- Limited. The law made nothing perfect. Some of its allowances met Israel's condition instead of expressing God's mind.
- Surpassed. Here the law allowed more than grace does. Grace gives power to rise above what law could only tolerate.
He says to them, Moses, in view of your hardheartedness, allowed you to put away your wives; but from the beginning it was not thus.
The Pharisees thought they had found a loophole: if Moses gave rules for a certificate of divorce, then God must approve of divorce. Jesus corrects them twice over. Moses allowed it; he did not command it. And behind the law stands what God did at the start.
Everything turns on one word the Pharisees swapped. They said Moses "commanded." The Lord said Moses "allowed," and He gave the reason.
The Lord goes back beyond the Law to show that God set up this relationship at the beginning, and that it comes before every other. They asked, "Why did Moses then command a man to give a certificate of divorce and send her away?" In the Law, through Moses, God had permitted divorce in a certain exceptional case (see Deut. 24:1), not commanded it as they said, and it was because of the hardness of their hearts. This word is the key to the whole passage. These men had never felt the deeper feelings of the human soul about God's arrangement for His creature. If they had, they could never have quibbled about divorce.
The Pharisees produced Moses as their defence. In the Lord's hands the same words become the evidence against them.
But they did not understand Moses, and they did not understand themselves. The Lord turns their own argument against them in the simplest way: "Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so." Moses himself was the one supplying the evidence of their own condition — and what evidence it was! The law, which was "weak through the flesh," could not perfect anything because a people ruled by the flesh resisted it. Their objection proved two things at once: their own evil, and how hopeless that evil was under law.
If the law came from God, how could it permit what God never wanted? Because God gave it to a whole nation, believers and unbelievers alike.
Moses allowed certain things that were not according to God's original pattern. This should be no surprise, for the law made nothing perfect. It was good in itself, but it could not make anyone good… The law contained certain concessions that did not express the mind of God at all. In it God was dealing with a people who lived by the flesh. The law does not treat a man as born of God; Christianity does… The law itself drew no line between those born of God and those who were not. It addressed all Israel, and not believers only, and so it allowed certain things in view of the hardness of their hearts.
So the law was a stage in God's dealings with man. What He set up at creation never expired.
The Lord takes the occasion to insist on this truth, that what God had established from the beginning of creation was always valid in itself. Moses had allowed a man to put away his wife under the law, but this was only the patience of God with the hardness of man's heart. It was not according to God's own heart and will. In creation at the beginning God made what was good — weak, but good. He allowed other things when He set up a temporary order for His people, for fallen man. But when He created them, He had made things another way. God had joined husband and wife, and man had no right to separate them.
People assume that law is strict and grace is easy. Here the opposite is true, and the reason is what each one supplies.
Moses allowed this because of their hardness of heart, but from the beginning it was not so. How clearly this shows that the law itself was not at all the expression of God's heart! In this case law was more permissive than the grace of God is! For grace enables a person to overcome difficulties in a way law could never do.
So the compromise had a time limit. It ended when the King came, and what replaced it was not a lower standard but a new power.
In the law there was a compromise between God's order and the hardness of men's hearts, and so under the law men could divorce their wives. But the Lord's coming into the world set all that aside. He came to establish a kingdom in which the will of God would be done, and He swept away the provision Moses had made for hard hearts. Grace reigns in that kingdom, and it enables all who are in it to fulfil every relationship according to God.
- Hardness — Moses' concession existed because of what the people were. That one word is the key to the whole passage.
- Allowed — Moses permitted divorce in one exceptional case. He never commanded it. The Pharisees misquoted him to defend themselves.
- Weakness — the law made nothing perfect. It drew no line between believer and unbeliever, so it stood lower than God's own mind.
- Beginning — what God set up at creation always holds. The later allowance was His patience with fallen man, not His heart.
- Grace — law allowed more than grace does, because grace gives power that law could never give.
But I say unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, not for fornication, and shall marry another, commits adultery; and he who marries one put away commits adultery.
The Pharisees came to Jesus with a test: could a man divorce his wife for any reason he liked? His answer took them back past Moses to creation, and then landed on this verse. In one sentence He names the only ground for ending a marriage, and the point at which a second marriage becomes adultery.
The Pharisees thought Scripture was on their side. They pointed to Moses, who allowed a man to hand his wife a certificate of divorce. That permission was itself evidence against them, and the Lord answers with His own authority:
They did not understand Moses, and they did not understand themselves. Their own argument turns against them in the simplest way: "Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so." It was Moses himself who was supplying the evidence — and what evidence — of their own condition! ... And He turns on them with one of those commanding sayings that sweep aside all power of resistance like a lightning flash of truth.
One writer contrasts what Moses allowed with what God's heart is really like:
Moses had allowed this because of the hardness of their hearts, but from the beginning it was not so. How clearly this shows that the law itself was not at all the expression of God's heart! In this case law was more permissive than the grace of God is! For grace enables a person to overcome difficulties in a way that law never could.
The clause "except for sexual immorality" does not open a loophole in a bond that would otherwise hold. It points to a bond already destroyed.
He establishes, or rather re-establishes, the true character of marriage as a bond that cannot be dissolved. I say it cannot be dissolved, because the case of unfaithfulness is not really an exception. The guilty person had already broken the bond. It was no longer man and woman one flesh.
This is also why the innocent party is not the one sinning:
The one exception is allowed because the sin has violated the marriage bond so deeply that it is as good as broken already. If one partner is guilty of sexual immorality, then it would not be adultery for the other to divorce and marry someone else. But the person who marries the partner put away for that sin would be guilty of adultery.
Nothing here tells a wronged partner to divorce. One writer shows both the mercy and the limit:
In His grace He makes room for one possible exception. A marriage can be dissolved before God when the terrible sin of adultery attacks its spiritual, mental and physical unity. This is not a command. It is an exception, in which God meets the wronged partner in his spiritual or emotional weakness. Yet do not forget: the sin of adultery can and should be forgiven when the guilty partner confesses it honestly, and it does not have to lead to divorce.
The weight of the verse falls on the words "and marries another." Adultery lies in the new union, not in the paperwork:
A divorce carried out before men (that is, in a court) does not by itself break the marriage entered into before God and man. What breaks it is the sexual union with another partner afterwards — even when this takes place in a new marriage!
All agree that sexual immorality is the one ground stated here. Whether Scripture allows any other ground, they do not all say the same. One writer treats the clause as closing the question:
The Lord Jesus here gives room for one exception, which clearly excludes any other exception... Yet this one and only exception is missing in Mark 10:11-12 and Luke 16:18. Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 does not mention it either... The Lord does not say that divorce cannot be avoided when one partner commits sexual immorality. He says only that in such a case, if the other partner remarries after a divorce, it is not adultery.
Another writer, commenting on the same teaching in Mark, points to a second case:
Often there may have been fault on both sides, and before another marriage a person should be broken before God, seeking only His will. 1 Corinthians 7:15 also shows that desertion breaks the marriage bond, so the deserted partner is left no longer under that bond.
- Beginning. God's design at creation is the standard, not what Moses allowed. That permission measured hard hearts, not God's mind.
- Bond. Marriage is a bond that cannot be dissolved, so the exception is no loophole. Sexual sin has already broken the one-flesh tie; the divorce only admits it.
- But. Even then God permits divorce; He does not command it. Confession opens the way to forgiveness, and the marriage can stand.
- Beyond paper. A court decree does not undo what God joined. The adultery named here belongs to the new union, and to whoever marries the partner put away.
- Beware. Commentators differ on whether desertion also frees the deserted partner. Anyone in that position should seek only God's will before remarrying.