It has been said too, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a letter of divorce.
Jesus turns from lust to marriage itself. He takes up a saying everyone knew: hand your wife a certificate, and you may send her away. But did Moses' words in Deuteronomy 24 ever give a husband the right to end his marriage whenever he liked?
Where did this saying come from? Not from a commandment God gave.
The Lord Jesus is not pointing to a commandment from the Old Testament. He is pointing to a habit of the Jews — the writing of a letter of divorce — which had probably existed before God gave the law at Sinai.
So Moses did not start it. The law only set rules around a habit that was already there.
The certificate was not a permission slip for the husband. It protected the wife he was sending away.
This bill of divorce was meant to stop a man from treating his wife cruelly — throwing her out and yet leaving her unable to marry anyone else.
The process itself added a second guard.
A bill of divorce had to be given to the woman. Drawing it up and having it witnessed put at least a small check on a man's hasty temper.
What God tolerated, men treated as a right. The safeguard for the wife became a tool in the hand of the husband.
Here the woman is protected against hard-hearted man. Only actual sin that breaks the marriage bond calls for divorce. Men abused the permission beyond all measure, as if it were a command; any annoyance was enough. But the LORD hates divorce, as the last prophet told the Jews in their evil day.
The teachers no longer argued over whether divorce was right. They argued over what counted as a reason.
One school of Jewish teachers said the "uncleanness" of Deuteronomy 24:1 meant adultery or some other immoral behaviour. Other teachers accepted anything a husband disliked about his wife as a reason for divorce.
Why did God allow this at all? The answer lies in whom the law was speaking to.
The law contained certain concessions that did not express God's mind at all. In the law God was dealing with a people in their natural state. The law does not think of a man as born of God; Christianity does… the law itself drew no line between those born again and those not born again. It spoke to all Israel, not to believers only. So it allowed certain things because of the hardness of their hearts.
Jesus does not leave the matter with Moses. He speaks on His own authority, and He reaches back further than Sinai.
He sets His own word down with divine authority, so that what He laid down stands in contrast to the law and goes far beyond its claims… And what could be plainer than what He does later, in Matthew 19? He goes back to the beginning, long before the law, to the order and the word God set up in Genesis 2. There again His own word is full and final authority.
Behind the certificate stands a bond God Himself made. Does it hold for every marriage?
According to God's will, marriage cannot be dissolved. The Lord Jesus makes this plain in Matthew 19:6: "What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate." This not only applies to marriages made "in the Lord," but to every marriage. Already in the Old Testament God had spoken to Jews who had divorced their wives: "For the LORD, the God of Israel, says that He hates putting away" (Malachi 2:16).
(That Malachi verse follows an older translation. The ESV reads: "For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the LORD, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence.")
- Custom. The certificate of divorce was a Jewish habit, older than Sinai. The Lord quotes a practice, not a command from God.
- Concession. The law made room for what God never wanted. It spoke to a whole nation, not to believers only, and allowed things because of hard hearts.
- Cover. The written, witnessed certificate protected the woman. It stopped a man from throwing her out and leaving her unable to remarry, and it cooled his temper.
- Corruption. Men treated the permission as a command. Any annoyance would do, and the teachers argued only over how little was enough.
- Correction. Christ speaks with an authority that reaches back past Moses to Genesis 2. There God joined two into one, and He hates to see that bond broken.
But *I* say unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, except for cause of fornication, makes her commit adultery, and whosoever marries one that is put away commits adultery.
Jesus has been reshaping the commandments one by one. Here He turns to the certificate of divorce, which men in His day used as a legal escape hatch. The verse raises two hard questions. What does divorce do to the person sent away? And why does one situation stand outside the rule?
The saying quoted in the previous verse came from a law meant to restrain cruelty, not to license it.
In connection with the light of heaven on the lusts of the heart, the Lord adds His word on the permission of divorce in Deuteronomy 24. Here the law protects the woman against hard-hearted man. Only actual sin that breaks the marriage tie calls for divorce. Men abused this permission beyond measure, as if it were a command; and any annoyance was enough. But the Lord hates putting away, as the last prophet testified to the Jews in their evil day.
The teachers of the day argued only over how wide the loophole was.
One school of rabbis taught that "uncleanness" in Deuteronomy 24:1 meant adultery or some other immoral behaviour. Other rabbis accepted anything a husband did not like about his wife as a reason for divorce.
Jesus does not say the man sins and the woman escapes. He says the man puts her in the way of sin.
Whatever the wife's faults and weaknesses may be, the man who divorces her puts her in danger. She may be bound to another husband afterwards. The Lord here calls such a relationship adultery. This implies that the first marriage is still valid before God. A marriage is entered into before God and man. A divorce carried out before men, that is, in a court, does not break it. What breaks it is sexual union with another partner afterwards — even when that union takes place in a new marriage. It hardly needs to be said that this also applies to the spouse who puts away, that is, divorces, the other.
Commentators read the single exception not as a fresh permission but as recognition of something already true.
The one exception is allowed here because the marriage bond has been so violated that it is already broken in fact. If one party is guilty of sexual immorality, then it would not be adultery for the other party to divorce the first and marry another.
Jesus does not command the wronged partner to divorce. He says only what is not adultery.
Here the Lord Jesus makes room for one exception, and it clearly rules out any other. This exception is missing in Mark 10:11-12 and Luke 16:18, and Paul does not mention it in 1 Corinthians 7. The Lord does not say that divorce is unavoidable when one partner commits sexual immorality. He says only that in such a case, if the other partner divorces and remarries, that is not adultery.
The closing words reach beyond the couple to the man who marries the divorced woman.
In God's thoughts, the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery. He breaks into a marriage that still exists before Him. These words of the Lord agree with what the apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians: "the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife."
Marriage is a relationship of this earth. It does not rest on human agreement alone.
So our Lord shows that serious difficulties may arise, yet God's own ordinance still stands strongly behind this human relationship. It belongs to this earth, but the light of heaven falls on it. Christ holds up the holiness of marriage. He shuts out every possibility that anything may interfere with it. One case stands apart: where something had already interrupted the marriage in the sight of God. There the act of separation only declares that it was broken already.
The law's penalty for adultery was death. Jesus does not repeat it here.
Here we see again what the Lord Jesus asks in His kingdom. He does not demand the literal keeping of the law given at Sinai. He seeks instead that His own should follow Him honestly and with a whole heart. For that reason He does not speak about the death penalty for the woman who had committed adultery. He warns His disciples about divorce and the sins caused by it. At the same time, in His grace, He makes room for the possible exception... We should not forget that the sin of adultery can and should be forgiven when the guilty one confesses it honestly. It does not have to lead to divorce.
- Permission, not command. Moses' certificate restrained hard-hearted men; the Jews turned a concession into a right.
- Bond, not paperwork. A court ruling does not end a marriage made before God. The first marriage still stands before Him.
- Exception, not escape. The one allowance covers a bond already broken by sin — it declares a fact rather than creating a freedom.
- Reach, not privacy. The words touch the one who divorces, the one divorced, and the one who marries her.
- Grace, not the death penalty. Christ does not repeat the death sentence of the law. He calls for whole-hearted faithfulness, and He leaves room for confession and forgiveness.