Section 98

Section 98
JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM
CONCERNING DIVORCE
MATT. 19:1-12
MARK 10:1-12

For every cause

"The temptation turned upon the dispute dividing the two great Rabbinical schools, the one of which (that of Hillel) held that a man might divorce his wife for any reason which rendered her distasteful to him; and the other (that of Shammai) that divorce was allowable only in case of unchastity. The querists would be anxious to know which side Jesus espoused."-VWS

 "The easiness with which divorce was obtained may be seen in Josephus, Who thus writes: "He who for any reason whatsoever (and many such causes happen to men) wishes to be separated from a wife who lives with him, must give it to her in writing that he will cohabit with her no longer, and by this means she shall have liberty to marry another man; but before this is done it is not permitted her to do so" (’Ant.,’ Mat_4:8, Mat_4:23). Josephus himself repudiated his own wife because he was not pleased with her behaviour (’Vita,’ § 76). And Ben-Sira gives the curt injunction, "If she go not as thou wouldest have her (καταÌ χεῖραì σου), cut her off from thy flesh,… and let her go" (Ecclesiasticus 25:26)." -Pulpit Commentary

Jesus sets a principle we can apply to our own questions---go back to the original purpose, design, and intent of the thing and work forward:

"He answered and said. Our Lord does not directly reply in the negative, but refers to the original institution of marriage." -Pulpit

So often we swirl around in the relativism of our own ideas about a thing, what it means to "us."  If we are Christians or Jews, we should go back to how God designed it to function. This meditation is useful too:

"Originally, man contained woman in himself before she was separated from him; she was a corporeal unity with man; or, as others put it, man, as a race, was created male and female, the latter being implicitly contained in the former; the previous unity is thus asserted. In marriage this unity is acknowledged and continued. St. Paul quotes this text in Eph_5:31; and in 1Co_6:16 uses it as an argument against fornication"-Pulpit

I don't know I've ever thought of the union of man and woman in such a reverse sense---that they were one unit before Eve was created out of Adam.  In this sense, a marriage echos back to a purer unity, call it ying yang, or complementary, or one's "soul mate"--there is a romantic sense of this type of original unity that can be argued for in some sense.   I don't know that you could argue for a particular soulmate from this passage, but certainly the fitting nature of marriage, its "rightness" is there.

And the reverse is equally true--the consequences of choosing to divorce react against this original principle:

"Let not man put asunder. Man does thus infringe the primitive rule when he divorces.his with. Herein he opposes God and acts against nature. He and his wife are one; they can no more separate from one another than they can from themselves. If we regard our Lord’s language in this passage without prejudice, and not reading into it modem notions, we must consider that he here decrees the indissolubility of the marriage tie. His hearers plainly understood him so to speak, as we see from the objection which they urged." -Pulpit

The Pulpit Commentary takes it a step further suggesting that divorce is not spiritually possible--interesting angle, but if it is a spiritual union, it follows a kind of intuitive sense.  God united, not man, so God can separate, not man.

The Jews went on to press the issue back to Moses's exceptions in Deuteronomy.  The Pulpit Commentary makes another good point when going back to Moses:

 "In regulating the method of divorce and giving rules which prevented it from being undertaken rashly and lightly, Moses could not justly be said to have commanded it."-Pulpit

All of this is very instructive:

"Moses because of (προÌς, with a view to, to meet) the hardness of your hearts; your obstinacy, perverseness. You were not honest and pure enough to obey the primitive law. There was danger that you would ill treat your wives in order to get rid of them, or even murder them. The lesser evil was regular divorce. But the enactment is really a shame and reproach to you, and was occasioned by grave defects in your character and conduct.

And it is not true to say that Moses commanded; he only suffered you to put away your wives. This was a temporary permission to meet your then circumstances. Divorce had been practised commonly and long; it was traditional; it was seen among all other Oriental peoples. Moses could not hope at once to eradicate the inveterate evil; he could only modify, mitigate, and regulate its practice. The rules which he introduced were intended, not to facilitate divorce, but to lead men better to realize the proper idea of marriage. And Christ was introducing a better law, a higher morality, for which Mosaic legislation paved the way (comp. Rom_5:20; Rom_8:3; Heb_9:10).

From the beginning. The original institution of marriage contained no idea of divorce; it was no mere civil contract, made by man and dissoluble by man, but a union of God’s own formation, with which no human power could interfere. However novel this view might seem, it was God’s own design from the first. The first instance of polygamy occurs in Gen_4:19, and is connected with murder and revenge." -Pulpit Commentary