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.
Comentário deste versículo
In the Sermon on the Mount, our Lord takes the command against adultery and presses it into the very heart, showing that God's holiness will not tolerate even the easy dissolution of the marriage tie which the Jews had come to allow. His pronouncement in Matthew 5:32 guards the sanctity of marriage as a divine ordinance.
The Sanctity of the Marriage Tie
William Kelly sets the verse in the context of the Lord's treatment of human corruption, following immediately upon the warning against the lustful look:
William Kelly"The Lord then denounces the easy dissolution of the tie of marriage: 'It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement. But I say unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery' (vers. 31, 32). Thus our Lord shows that though there might be serious difficulties, still this human relationship receives the strong sanction of God's ordinance. Though an earthly relationship, the light of heaven is thrown upon it, the sanctity of marriage held up, and the possibility of allowing anything to interfere with its holiness entirely put down by Christ, save only where there was that which interrupted it in the sight of God, in which case the act of separation would be only a declaration of its being already actually broken."
Kelly makes the vital point that the single exception — fornication — is not so much the ground of a permitted dissolution as the declaration of a bond already broken in God's sight.
Violence and Corruption Under the Light of Heaven
Kelly further shows how this word belongs to a wider pattern in our Lord's exposition of the law. Having already judged the murderous thought and the lustful look, Christ now applies the same searching light to the marriage bond:
"But there is another thing besides violence: there is the corrupt element in the heart of man — the heart lusting for that which it has not… whatever in our walk, or in our ways, or in our service, whatever it might be that exposes a soul to the danger of yielding to these unholy feelings, should never be spared, but departed from at any cost."
The Divine Institution of Marriage
J. N. Darby, in his synopsis of Matthew 5, frames the passage as part of our Lord bringing to light what the law had only borne with:
J. N. Darby"The Lord then takes up certain things borne with by God in Israel, and ordered according to what they could bear. Thus was now brought into the light of a true moral estimate, divorce — marriage being the divinely given basis of all human relationships — and swearing or vowing, the action of man's will in relationship to God."
For Darby, the significance of the verse lies in this: marriage is not merely one relationship among others, but the divinely given basis of all human relationships, and therefore cannot be treated lightly.
A Deeper Spiritual Echo
William Kelly, commenting on the parallel word in Luke 16:18, suggests that the Lord's statement against putting away one's wife is not only a literal prohibition but carries a spiritual weight pointing to the believer's relationship to the law and to Christ:
William Kelly"And does it not seem most striking that in the very next verse our Lord uses the same allusion on which the apostle reasons in the beginning of Romans 7? 'Every one who puts away his wife, and marries another, commits adultery; and every one that marries one put away from her husband commits adultery.' (Matt. 5:32; Matt. 19:9 Mark 10:11f.) Undoubtedly both principles apply to the literal fact most truly and in the letter… No doubt the Jews allowed divorce for frivolous causes and marriage after such a divorce, and in both encouraged adultery. I cannot but think there is more in the connection here."
The Hardness of Heart That Made the Concession
J. R. McBroom, taking up the parallel passage in Matthew 19 where our Lord treats the same question, explains why Moses ever allowed a writing of divorcement, and warns against the spirit of the age that treats the bond lightly:
J. R. McBroom"Jehovah in the Law through Moses 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. Had these men ever entered into the finer feelings of the human soul in relation to the ordering of God for His creature they never could have quibbled about divorce."
He continues with a striking application for our own day:
"Marriage was instituted at creation, for an exceptional case divorce was permitted by the law, but now in grace the woman is recovered from deep debasement to her honoured position in life as created by God. The awful departure from it in these last days is working dreadful havoc in society and causing suffering, sorrow and death. Does not this show that an outrage upon marriage is an attack upon the soul in its most inmost and mysterious depth."
Synthesis
Taken together, these witnesses make the meaning of Matthew 5:32 plain. Our Lord is not legislating a new civil code for divorce; He is throwing the light of heaven upon a relationship which the Jews of His day had debased by easy dissolutions and frivolous pretexts. Marriage, as the divinely given basis of all human relationships, must not be dissolved by the will of man. The single exception — fornication — is not a loophole but the recognition that where such sin has occurred, the one-flesh bond has already been broken in the sight of God, and the formal act of putting away is only the declaration of what has already taken place. To put away a wife on any lesser ground is to expose her to adultery, and to marry one so divorced is itself adultery — because God's ordinance still holds, however men may trifle with it. The word thus belongs to that portion of the Sermon where Christ judges the heart's corruption, refusing to let His disciples be satisfied with the outward letter while tolerating inward violence or corruption.