Man, Woman, and Family in Christ (Part 8 of 0)

Man, Woman, and Family in Christ – Part eight

V. “Till Death Us Do Part”

The climate of our times is increasingly unfavorable to the idea of performance in marriage. Though in some countries the ruling religious influence is unfavorable to divorce, and various subterfuges have to be resorted to when it is desired to dissolve a marriage, in most of those where our community is represented progressive relaxation is occurring. While there is no uniformity of procedure in various lands (or even in various states of the same land), the legal procedures necessary for the annulment of a marriage have been greatly simplified, and the stigma attached to being a divorced and remarried person is much lighter than it was formerly.

As a result there is now growing up a pathetic company of young people who have come from broken homes, brought up by one parent only, or by this and a new step-parent, or having lived an orphaned existence as the ward of remoter relations or unrelated guardians. And for them, unless they find it anew for themselves, there is no anchor on which their future married stability can be rested, with the result that the problem is self-propagating. When we add to this the disruptive opinions expressed in the sociological departments of our Universities concerning outmoded concepts of the family as a social unit, and the daring publications of the most liberal religious communities, all tending to dignify the present trend with respectability which hides all too effectively its fundamentally squalid character.

Such an outlook on marriage, in which it is treated as a convenience, at best, for as long as it pleases both parties to maintain it so, to be discarded as soon as it fails to fulfill the wishes of both (or, worse still, of only one to the dismay of the other), is utterly at variance with the picture we have tried to draw of marriage as a picture of the Lord and His Church.

It is true that the Old Testament permitted of the dissolution of marriage in certain circumstances, while in others it forbade it.1 It is also true that it permitted polygamy, though always adopting a position which intimated clearly enough that this was not the way to marital happiness, nor yet to faithfulness to God.2 The social law of Israel was given as the best solution to a difficult twin task: that of setting before a chosen people the high ideals which belong to the people of God; and that of recognizing that no nation will in fact consent to be governed by ideal principles, so that provision must be made whereby its passions and sins can be regulated, and their gross indulgence punished. 3 And in our present context, the outraged declaration of the prophet: “The Lord hateth putting away”4 is a truer reflexion of the mind of the Almighty on this matter than the permission granted to sinful men to fall in some measure short of this. The Old Testament clearly provides for, and anticipates, the declaration of the Lord Jesus that it was “for the hardness of their hearts” that Moses permitted men to put away their wives, while “from the beginning it was not so”.5

But the problem is very difficult, and ideas about it, even among those pledged and anxious to uphold the Bible’s teaching, are by no means uniform. For this reason it is essential to consider the matter calmly and fairly, and even when we have well-formed views of our own (as in some respects the present writer has) give due weight to the sincerely formed views of others in suggesting lines of conduct to be followed. So we must proceed slowly, and at some length, in building up the Bible’s teaching.

  1. Divorce in the Old Testament

The situation is complicated by the tolerance of polygamy. If a man desired a new wife, he did not necessarily have to dispense with the Old. Jacob, and El­kanah, can be cited as examples of men who had two wives without being reproached for it,6 but who suffered nevertheless from the inevitable tensions of such an estate; Solomon is our supreme example of the disaster which could follow in the wake of unbridled exercise of one’s desires in defiance of the strict injunctions of the Law for a man in his position.7 The Law was concerned, in cases where polygamy existed, to provide for the proper treatment of wives for whom affection had waned, since they could otherwise be condemned to a life of effectively helpless widowhood, while continuing to be bound by the duties and loyalties attaching to the married state.8

Nevertheless, in one passage Moses did permit divorce) And the grounds for this are by no means easy to elucidate. A man may divorce his wife “because he bath found some unseemly thing in her,” and must in that case give her a document to show that she is no longer bound to him, and therefore is at liberty to be married to another. She may in no circumstances be taken by him again,1 which would be a patent evidence of the insincerity of his rejection of her the first time. But what is the “unseemly thing?” One of our difficulties is that it is also unseemly to talk or write about such things any more than is necessary, and we ought to feel a proper distaste for pursuing such subjects any further than we absolutely must. But under that elimination it has been urged that it cannot be his discovery of evidence that she was not a virgin or her own choice, which would by the Law have resulted in her death,2 and so it has been concluded that she must have been found to be the innocent victim of violent assault which, without involving her in any penalty,3 might well have been a ground on which a man might decline to take her for a wife.

Commentaries are cagey as to what the “unseemly thing,” or “thing of nakedness” may be, and translators are varied and arbitrary in their renderings. The word occurs often enough in the Old Testament, and is used of human nakedness, the “nakedness of the land,” and actions which it requires uncovering to perform,4 and the only conclusion which, it seems, can be safely drawn from the expression is that it involves some fault or defect which could not be expected to reveal itself until the marriage night. It is altogether improper to provide a ready-made solution of this problem on the basis of some hard-and-fact doctrine of what the Bible teaches about divorce; and the disputes between conservative and liberal pharisaic schools as to what grounds for divorce are covered by this expression reveal, if nothing more, how difficult the words are of precise definition.

So we must leave this passage having learned only that there might be grounds on which a man would decide (probably very early in his married experience, and possibly before he and his intended wife had actually come together) that he did not intend to accept her as his wife; and when those grounds were alleged, it was necessary to provide for her the protection of a writing of divorcement, so that she could if she and another man so wished, be lawfully married a second time.

What is striking about this passage, though, is not so much that divorce was regulated, and thereby to that extent permitted, but how restricted the grounds appear to have been. And even when these grounds were allowed, there was one group of people — the priests — who were not permitted to take such a woman for their wife.5The liberty to divorce his wife is, moreover, specifically withdrawn from the man who has slandered his wife in the matter of her former virginity, whom henceforth “he may not put away all his days. “6

One other point needs to be made: the Law did not provide for divorce for proved adultery. A man who seduced the wife or betrothed of another, together with the woman herself, was required to be stoned for the offence, and the same applied if a man intending to take a woman for his wife were able to show that he had been deceived in her, and that she had been guilty of unfaithfulness7 In the nature of the case, adultery was not possible between a man, whether married or not, and an unfledged maiden, because it lay within his power lawfully to take her in marriage, and this he was required to do if the matter came to light. The rulers who said to Jesus that “Moses in the Law commanded that such should be stoned”8 were correct as far as they went, but in view of the nature of their allegations it is surprising that they did not recall that Moses had said this of both offenders!

  1. The Lord Jesus’ pronouncements on divorce

It should be said at the start that the Lord Jesus frequently makes the provisions of the Law more difficult for His followers. That is, He takes commandments which affect externals only (such as, “Thou shalt not commit adultery”), and extends them to the thoughts which would prompt the act.9 So we should not expect any relaxation of the Law’s requirements on our lives. On the other hand He shows mercy to one whom the Law would certainly have required to be stoned”: which may make it very difficult for us to lay down punishments and banishment’s with any certainty when we come to consider what should be done, where breach of the Lord’s commandments has occurred. But this is not the first time in Scripture that such problems have had to be faced: the sin of David with Bath-Sheba was such that the Law would there, too, have required both to be stoned (with David meriting the capital penalty a second time for the murder of Uriah) : and yet not only were both parties allowed to live, but David was permitted to enjoy his conquest when once the firstborn of the union had died.10

If we concentrate on Jesus’s words in Mark and Luke, His outlook on divorce and remarriage seems quite uncompromising:

“For the hardness of your heart he (Moses, concerning the bill of divorcement) wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, male and female made He them. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the twain shall become one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder . . . Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her; and if she herself shall put away her husband, and marry another, she committeth adultery.”11

“Everyone that putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and he that marrieth one that is put away from a husband committeth adultery.”12

Jesus here appears to disallow the liberty which Moses, however reluctantly, granted. He claims that, when once God has joined two people together, it does not lie within the prerogative of man to dissolve the union. He speaks of the man who divorces and remarries as an adulterer; of the woman who does the same as an adulteress; and of the man who takes a divorced woman as his wife as an adulterer again. Indeed, He embraces within the scope of His words a situation (that of a woman putting away her husband) which could not have existed as far as we know under Old Testament conditions, and must have developed in the more emancipated society within which the Jews now lived. But this same prohibition against a woman separating from her husband to marry another is also contained in Paul’s writings.13

It would seem that everything was quite clear if we only had these passages to deal with. But our contentment (if this solution left us content) is abruptly shattered when the two passages in Matthew which deal with this subject are introduced. They are:

“It was said also, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement: but I say unto you, that everyone that putteth away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, maketh her an adulteress: and whosoever shall marry her when she is put away commit­eth adultery,14

and,

“Whosoever shall put away his wife, except for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery; and he that marrieth her when she is put away com­mitteth adultery” :15 the latter of these in the same context as the Mark passage, which should be consuited for the earlier part of the Lord’s answer.

An entirely new situation arises because of the famous “exceptive clause” shown in italics, and it is necessary to examine carefully the alternative possibilities, if only to understand how opinions of faithful brethren can vary as widely as they do.

  1. Deuteronomy 24:4; Jeremiah 3.1.
  2. John 8.5; Leviticus 20.10; Deuteronomy 22.22.
  3. Deuteronomy 22.25-27.
  4. Deuteronomy 24.1. The word rendered “uncleanness” in the King James Version is from the two words bâh érwath in the Hebrew, “thing of nakedness”. The use of érwâh, nakedness, is sufficiently illustrated by these examples: Genesis 9.22;* Exodus 28.22; Leviticus 18 passim, Isaiah 20.4, and the related adjective in Job 26.6 (*Insert here 42. 12). It is obviously impossible to fasten a particular sin or offence and regard it as the invariable meaning of the words here used.
  5. Leviticus 21.7,14; Ezekiel 44.22.
  6. Deuteronomy 22.19.
  7. Deuteronomy 22.20-21; 22-25; Leviticus 20.10.
  8. John 8.5.
  9. Matthew 5.27-28; Exodus 20.14; Deuteronomy 5.18.
  10. 2 Samuel 11.1-12.25.
  11. Mark 10.3-12.
  12. Luke 16.18.
  13. Romans 7.2-3; 1 Corinthians 7.39.
  14. Matthew 5.31-32.
  15. Matthew 19.3-12.