(Continuing from last week)
DIVORCE
Today some individuals refer to Deut. 24:1-4 as a basis for what they are pleased to consider as “Christian divorce”. In reality these verses open to our view, the home life of the Jews, in which the taking of a wife was regarded as acquiring of a piece of property. The husband’s authority over his wife was almost absolute. The purpose of the law in this passage was to better the lot of the Hebrew woman. This law, far from establishing a low moral standard or approving of one, represented a far higher standard than the cruel custom of the time, recognized.
The law guaranteed the divorced woman certain rights, and actually protected her from being considered as an adulteress and an outcast. She left her first husband’s home a free woman and a respected member of the society, eligible to contract an honourable marriage. The writ of divorce states that her first husband no longer had any legal claim upon her and that she was in no way obligated to him – she was free to become another man’s wife. Upon marrying again she did not become guilty of adultery, and the rights of her first husband were not infringed upon.
The Mosaic divorce law was instituted, not to annul the ideals of marriage as instituted by God at creation, but because of the “hardness” of men’s hearts (Matt. 19:8). The cast-off, unattached woman’s lot was a deplorable one. The bill of divorce alleviated her unfortunate lot. This law simply recognised the prevailing situation and sought to improve it. This was a law of permission and not one of command. These precise restrictions were designed to eliminate the easy divorce procedure the Hebrews had apparently learnt from their association with heathen peoples.
It was against the concept of the wife as property that Christ spoke so emphatically (Matt. 5:27-32; 19:3-9). It had brought greater misery and injustice to Jewish womanhood. The “ School of Hillel ” which provided the popular Jewish religious philosophy of Christ’s time interpreted the expression translated “some uncleanliness” (verse 1) as meaning anything that may have become displeasing to the husband. The stricter, but less popular “ Shammai School” defined the “uncleanliness” as some proved acts of immodesty or adultery. In Christ’s time the Hillel School allowed divorce for such trivialities as the exposure of the woman’s arm in public, the burning of a husband’s meal or when the husband found another more attractive woman. Of this lax attitude, Josephus – a renowned Hebrew historian – writes: He that desires to be divorced from his wife for any cause whatsoever (and many such causes happen among men) let him give assurance that he will never use her again as his wife, for by these means she may be at liberty to marry another husband, although before this bill of divorce is given, she is not permitted so to do” (Antiquities 4:8,23).
The law of Deut. 24:1-4 did not institute divorce, but tolerated it in view of the imperfection of human nature and the low moral concepts of God’s people at that time. To know God’s mind on marriage one must not camp on Deut. 24:1-4, but journey back to Gen. 1:27 and 2:24 even as Jesus did (Matt. 5:27-32; 19:3-9). The written counsel of Moses for the people of his day is to be interpreted against the background of his day, not of ours, of today, and ever with the divine ideal in view. Christ lifted man’s eyes once more in that divine ideal ordained in Eden . That first marriage provides the pattern God would have His people follow today.
It is against the pervasion of the people then and now that many divorce their wives on trivialities of mundane desires that God spoke to all generations of mankind through prophet Malachi 2:15,16. He specifically in verse 16 says that He hates divorce, indicating that the man who divorces his lawful wife covers his “garment with violence” (RSV) that is, he invests himself with iniquity and its consequences from which he cannot escape. It is evident from Christ’s statement that unchastity is the only ground for divorce (Matt. 19:9). This further confirms the earlier assertion in this discourse that Deut. 24:1– 4 does not institute divorce.
A careful examination of Matt. 19:9; 5:32; 1 Cor. 7:1-6 will lead to the truths. That marriage is a permanent and exclusive union of one woman to one man, and so, can only be innocently dissolved by death: but that extreme violation of the precepts of the union by one party annihilates the bond, so that the offender is as though he/she were dead to the other: that the only sins against the bond, which have the effect, are those which are absolutely incompatible with the relationship – adultery and willful final desertion. In these cases, the bond having been destroyed for the innocent party he/she is completely single as though the other were dead.
NT LAW ON DIVORCE
Under the NT concepts set out by Christ in Matt. 5:32, 19:9, divorce is not mandatory but permissible, therefore any alliance a divorced woman contracts with another man, even after the legal divorce, violets her original marriage law, which constitutes adultery and by a parity of reasoning, the man marrying her also becomes an adulterer.
Under the Jewish perverse marriage law, the woman is liberated from her marriage obligations by the bill of divorcement, but under Christianity, a wife “put away” by her husband for whatever reason – including adultery which is the only condition permitting divorce; by marrying another man, she commits fornication (Matt. 5:32), because her previous marriage was not validly dissolved in God’s sight (cf Mark 10:11,12).
Christ boldly sets aside the rabbinical (Jewish) tradition of His day, especially that of the Hillel School which permitted divorce even for trivial reasons. (Mishnah Gittin 9.10. Soncino Edition of Talmud, pages 436,437). It has been observed that no marriage existed among the Jews of the Mishnaic period from which the husband could not abruptly free himself in a legal fashion. A husband who puts away his wife, and marries another commits adultery (Matt. 19:19) and by this act leads her to commit the same crime (Matt 5:32). Equally a wife who divorce her husband incurres the same kind of guilt (Mark 10:12)
The marriage relationship has been perverted by sin, even among Christians. Jesus’s intendment is to restore to it, the purity and beauty originally ordained by the Creator. In doing this, He empahsised that marriage was divinely ordained, and, when properly entered in, becomes divinely ratified. What God had joined together, no rabbinical tradition or practice could put asunder.
POLYGAMY
Polygamy is prohibited by the Seventh Commandment and is therefore sinful. The whole legislation of the Pentateuch and of all OT is adverse to polygamy. Some Christian divines have thought otherwise on the ground that polygamy is recorded of Abraham, Jacob, Gideon, Elkenah, David and Solomon (reputed to be great friends of God) but so are other sins of several of these; and, as every intelligent reader knows, the narrative of the holy writ often discloses the sins of good men as warning to mankind, and their virtues for the emulation of man. Polygamy appears in almost every Bible instance as the cause of domestic feud, sin, and disaster. This leaves little doubt that the Holy Spirit tacitly holds – up all these cases for our caution, and not for our approval. Noteworthy are the following:
God made for Adam, one wife only, and taught him the great law of the perpetual unity of the twin, just as is now taught by our Saviour Jesus Christ. (Gen. 2:23, 24 with Matt. 19:4-16). God preserved only one wife each for Noah and his sons.
In every statute and perceptive word of the Holy Spirit, it is always wife and not wives. Moses, in Lev. 18:18, in the code regulating marriage, expressly prohibits the marriage of a second wife in the lifetime of the first, thus enjoining monogamy in terms as clears as those of Christ.
The English version of Lev. 18:18 has it thus: “Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister, to vex her, to uncover her nakedness beside the other, in her life time”. Many insist on taking the word “sister” in its literal sense, and thus force on the law the meaning that the man desiring to practice polygamy may do so, provided he does not marry two daughters of the same parents; for if he did this, the two sisters sharing his bed would like Rachel and Lear quarrel more fiercely than two strangers.
But the word “sister” must undoubtedly be taken in the sense of mates, fellows – which it bears in a number of passages in the Bible – (Ex. 26:3,5,6,17; Ezekiel 1:9; 3:13 etc), and this for two controlling reasons. The sense of blood sisters makes Moses appear to argue that two sisters of the same parents sharing one man’s bed will quarrel, but two women having no kindred blood relationship will not. This is false to fact, and to nature. Did Leah and Rachel show more jealousy than Sarah and Haggar; Hannah and Peminah? But when it is correctly understood to mean that the husband shall not divide his bed with a second mate while the first is still living because such a wrong ever harrows and outrages the great instincts placed in a woman’s heart by the Creator, Moses’s injunction here becomes truthful and logical, as expected of a profound legislator.
The other reason for this construction is that the other sense places the 18th verse of Lev.18 in irreconcilable contradiction to the 16th verse which forbids the marriage of a woman to the husband of her deceased sister; while the 18th verse in this false meaning, would authorise it.
(To be continued next week)
