What were the Shammaite and Hillelite interpretations of Jewish Law?

Two great opinions divided then the Pharisees about divorce. Some held to the views of Hillel and others to the views of Shammai. Hillel had taught that indeed for almost every cause a wife may be put away. We care not to fill our space with a record of all the different causes for divorce and the rules, which the elders had laid down and which, at least among the extremely orthodox Jews, are still conscientiously followed. (It has often been our experience to talk with some poor Jewish woman, left by her husband, who got a divorce from the rabbi. We remember one case where a man got a "Gett" -- a bill of divorcement from his wife for an insignificant cause and came to this country to marry again. His divorced wife followed him here. These conditions have been quite a problem in New York courts.) The school of Hillel declared openly, and practised this, that if the wife cooks her husband's food badly, by over salting or over roasting it, she is to be put away. The school of Shammai, to which other Pharisees held, permitted not divorces except in the case of adultery. This will shed more light on the temptation of these Pharisees.

Yet from this allowance in Deuteronomy 24 the Jews had derived a permission for divorce and a commandment for giving a writing of divorcement. We can see this from the Pharisees' question in Matthew 19:7: "Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?" The only disagreement among them was about the reasons for divorce. One school of rabbis taught that "uncleanness" in Deuteronomy 24:1 was adultery or some other form of immoral behaviour, while other rabbis accepted anything a husband did not like about his wife as a reason for divorce. In Matthew 19:3 the Pharisees seem to refer to these disagreements among their teachers, "Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?"

(1) Here it is the Pharisees who bring up the question of marriage, or of its obligation, in order, as it has been reasonably conjectured, to seek to involve Him in the disputes between the rabbinical schools of Hillel and Shammai, who were at issue as to divorce. The question; "Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?" seems indeed to refer to the opinions of the former, who went as far as to decide that a wife spoiling her husband's dinner was cause enough. But in answer the Lord goes further than Shammai himself, and removing all that man had in the meantime obscured it with, finds His argument in the institution of marriage at the beginning, ― an argument which strikes at polygamy, as well as the loose holding of the marriage tie, and brings us beyond all that has come in with sin; to the first design of the Creator for His creatures.

414 Hillel, for example, taught ("Gittin," ix. 10) that a man might divorce his wife for burning his dinner or oversalting his soup.

They had occupied the legislative seat, and when their sect started it was with a zeal for the law, which God had given through Moses. Soon, however, they became corrupt. In that part of the Talmud which is called the Mishnah* it is stated that they were to be regarded as if put into that place by Moses himself, taking their places in his seat, and were to be obeyed, so far as outward observations were concerned. (The Talmud is composed of two parts, the Gemara and the Mishna. Mishna means "repetition," and was a repetition of the written law.)

As far as the God given law was concerned and its observances, they were to do and to keep what the Pharisees said. What a wise exhortation this is! He, the King, fully recognized the position they had taken; if He had spoken otherwise, they might have accused Him of inciting the multitudes to riot against their authority. Romans 13:1-7 contains a similar wise exhortation by the Spirit of God for this present age. Against which the Lord warns is their works. There were two great schools among these Pharisees as we stated before; the school of Hillel and the school of Shammai. These were occupied with interpretations of the law. What strange interpretations were given, what tedious burdens were bound upon the people, which God never meant, could easily be illustrated and demonstrated by quotations from that tremendous literary work, the Talmud. "The burdens became intolerable. The blame rested equally on both the great rabbinic schools. For although the school of Hillel was supposed in general to make the yoke lighter, and that of Shammai heavier, yet not only did they agree on many points, but the school of Hillel was not unfrequently even more strict than that of his rival. In truth their differences seem too often only prompted by a spirit of opposition, so that the serious business of religion became in their hands one of rival authority and mere wrangling" (Edersheim). But while they put these burdens upon the people and domineered over them they neither kept them nor did they move a finger to remove them. In connection with this external show of religion, for which the Pharisees stood, the Phylacteries are mentioned. The general Christian reader has little information about the meaning of this word. The word "phylacteries" means "observatories" to keep the remembrance of the Law alive. In different parts of the Pentateuch we read these words, "And thou shalt bind these words for a sign on thy hand, and they shall be for frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and upon thy gates" (Exod. 13:9-16; Deut. 6:9, etc.). The last named injunction, "Write them upon the posts of thy house," is literally practised by orthodox Jews, by writing these words upon a piece of parchment, inclosing them in a tin box, and this box is nailed on the door posts. From the same words the phylacteries, or tephillin, were instituted. These are two strips of leather to each of which is attached a small box; in these boxes there are likewise pieces of parchment upon which the Hebrew text of Deut. 6:4-8 is written. The one leather strip with this box is wound around the forehead, the box resting in the middle of the forehead, while the second strip is wound around the arm, the left arm, which is nearest to the heart. The ends of this one is made to form the Hebrew letter "shin," which stands for Shaddai, the Almighty. Strange and curious laws are connected with the preparation of the phylacteries, the wearing of them; the rabbinical writings contain much on the phylacteries which is superstitious. Thus the talmudical tract Berachoth declares, "It is necessary to wear the phylacteries nights in the home as they drive away the demons." Orthodox Jews use them as their fathers did, and there is no doubt that the wearing of phylacteries in the twentieth century by strictly orthodox Jews and their belief in them is the same as in the days when our Lord spake these words. It is seen that the phylacteries sprung from a literal interpretation of the above passages in the Pentateuch, an outward religious observance for which there was no foundation whatever in the law. The Lord, however, does not attack this, we believe, ancient custom, but He attacks the habits of the Pharisees to wear the phylacteries and the enlarged borders of their garments (Num. 15:38), so as to be seen of men. They did it all for show; selfishness controlled them and they had no heart for the things of God. They loved the first places, the honor and praise of men; flatterers, they enjoyed and loved to receive honoring salutations from the side of men in market places. "Rabbi, Rabbi," which means teacher or instructor, they loved to be addressed as well as "Abba," which is "father." All these titles simply sprang from their self-seeking. The Lord now gives teaching, telling his hearers that which concerns of course disciples alone, that they are brethren and that they have but one teacher, the Christ Himself; that they should not call man father, but one is their Father, God Himself. The greatest of His own is the One, who is a servant of all. This reaches over into the new dispensation. The instructor, the guide, is the Lord and the Holy Spirit. Alas! how the enemy has succeeded in producing and fostering this distinctive mark of Pharisaism in Christendom, with its man-made institutions, titles, honors, offices and leaderships.

We are next told that "no less loud and bitter in the Talmud are the protests against 'lip-serving,' against 'making the law a burden to the people,' against 'laws that stand on hairs,' against priests and Pharisees! The fundamental mysteries of the new faith are matters totally apart; but the ethics in both are, in their broad outlines, identical. That grand dictum, 'Do unto others as thou wouldst be done by,' against which Kant declared himself energetically from a philosophical point of view, is quoted by Hillel, the president, at whose death Jesus was ten years of age, not as anything new, but as an old and well-known dictum 'that comprised the whole law.' The most monstrous mistake has ever been our mixing up, in the first instance, single individuals, or classes, with a whole people; and next, our confounding the Judaism of the time of Christ with that of the time of the wilderness, of the Judges, or even of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Judaism of the time of Christ (to which that of our days, owing principally to the Talmud, stands very near) and that of the Pentateuch are as like each other as our England is like that of William Rufus, or the Greece of Plato that of the Argonauts." (pp. 437, 438.)

Indeed we see it in the very next incident with which chapter 2 closes. Again the Pharisees come, complaining of the disciples to the Master. The offence now was that they did not exactly fit their activities into the "old bottle" of certain regulations concerning the sabbath. The Pharisees pushed their sabbath-keeping so far that they condemned even rubbing ears of corn in the hand, as though it were working a mill. They contended for a very rigid interpretation of the law in these minor matters. They were the people who kept the law with meticulous care, whilst they considered the disciples to be slack.

103 Mark 10:2. — Bennett on the Mishna (p. 72 1.) refers to the Talmudical treatise Gittin (4:8, 8:5, 8), for loose views of the Rabbins on the subject of divorce, akin to those prevalent in some American States.

In contrast the Jewish scribes relied on the authority of well-known Rabbis who had lived before them for all they taught. This is why their explanations were often lengthy and dry. Many of the schools of Jewish teaching from the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes had grown up in the 400 years after the last prophets of the Old Testament. They disputed over basic questions but were often taken up with debates about trifling matters. It is difficult to follow the arguments of the scribes, but many a sermon of our own day is not much better.

Alas! it is evident where the heart is from the sentence that follows: "The development of the law itself was nothing in their hands but a means to keep the spirit as opposed to the word — the outward frame — in full life and flame, and to vindicate for each time its own right to interpret the temporal ordinances according to its own necessities and acquirements." A more dangerous and delusive fancy there cannot be. There never breathed the man who walked and taught in the spirit of God's will as Jesus did; yet none ever honoured as Jesus the word of God. And Jesus branded the scribes and Pharisees of Jerusalem with setting aside the command of God because of such traditions as fill the Mishnah. They were not temporal ordinances, but injunctions of God, which the Judaism of Christ's age annulled, from no necessity whatever save the licentious will and pride of man. No time, no man, has a right to weaken the authority of God's word. This is no question of "black sheep" among the Pharisees, but of the principle of human tradition which made them all a party of declension from scripture. The Talmud must inveigh against its own existence if it upheld divine revelation against the traditions of men.