- Between Divorce and Putting Away
Deuteronomy 24:1 presents the process of a legal divorce, three clear steps to a proper divorce between a man and his wife:
When a man takes a wife, and marries her, then it shall be, if she find no favor in his eyes, because he has found some unseemly thing in her, that he shall write her a bill of divorce, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house (Deuteronomy 24:1, World English Bible).
For the process to be complete and the divorce technically valid, based on the preceding marital breach (porneia, `ervah, etc.) warranting the process,
- “he shall write her a bill of divorce” – legal documentation
- “and give it in her hand” – witness, evidence, consent or concession of the other
- “and send her out of his house” – physical separation
The “bill of divorce” in her hand was the legal or official document on the dissolution of the union between the two; it was the evidence that there was a valid divorce; it was the woman’s license to be remarried, if she wished. The Pharisees tempted Jesus by asking if it was ok to do No. 3 for every reason. Jesus said that one could not do No 3 without the preliminary steps, based on conjugal unchastities. It sometimes happened that an aggrieved husband sent the wife out of the house without formally dissolving the marriage by giving her a document that freed her from him. In that case, she remained legally bound to him as wife, and technically stood guilty of adultery if she married another man while the previous marriage had not been properly dissolved. The husband was accordingly no less guilty for ‘causing her to commit adultery,’ and guilty of adultery himself if he married another without properly releasing the previous woman (Deuteronomy 24:1-4).
The meaning of a proper divorce (“proper” stressed) is that a hitherto existing marriage or covenant between the two parties has been dissolved, that a bond between the two has been properly, formally broken, thereby freeing the parties to each enter any fresh covenant with another person, as they might wish. The point is well clarified by God Himself who, hundreds of years after Moses, speaking through the prophet Jeremiah, said, “If a man [1] divorces his wife, and [2] she leaves him and [3] becomes another man’s wife …” (Jeremiah 3:1, Good News Translation). That verse has many implications:
- that divorces could occur, and did occur,
- that God Himself accepted (rather than condemned) the fact,
- that a remarriage (to another) could occur after the divorce,
- that such a remarriage was not disallowed, not considered a transgression,
- that the partners in the new relationship would validly be called “man” (husband) and “wife,” not adulterer and adulteress.
It was not Moses or Jeremiah speaking in that verse, but God Himself, quoting the law of Moses in Deuteronomy 24:1-4. That puts a kind of seriousness to the point.
Whereas there are instances in the Bible where ‘putting away’ meant divorce in the general sense, because physical separation was the final stage of a divorce, the Jewish society understood the difference between the two; they understood the context when they heard or read the speech. That a man could ‘cause’ a woman to technically commit adultery, or that her sin could be attributable to his action or no-action, was clear to Jesus’ hearers in that culture. They knew that, according to the Torah and the tradition, it was customarily in the man’s power, not the woman’s, to terminate the marriage not just by physically separating from her by sending her out of the house but also releasing her lawfully from himself with a ‘marriage dissolution certificate’ – the “bill of divorcement” – to show for it (Matthew 19:9; Mark 10:4). Paul says in Romans 7:1: “I speak to them that know the law.” There was a law, and that law was common knowledge to the hearers. In Jesus’ encounter with the Pharisees, what shocked the disciples was not the divorce but the fact that it could not be done ‘for every cause,’ which seemed to curtail the man’s apparently absolute powers over the woman in that culture. To use the words of Paul in Romans 7:2, in that patriarchal society, what operated was largely “the law of her husband.”
With very slight variations in individual cases, the certificate of divorcement generally took the following form:
DIVORCE
On the day of the week A. in the month B. in the year C. from the beginning of the world, according to the common computation in the province of D., I, N. the son of N. by whatever name I am called, of the city E. with entire consent of mind, and without any compulsion, have divorced, dismissed, and expelled thee-thee, I say, M. the daughter of M. by whatever name thou art called, of the city E. who wast heretofore my wife: but now I have dismissed thee-thee, I say, M. the daughter of M. by whatever name thou art called, of the city E. so as to be free, and at thine own disposal, to marry whomsoever thou pleasest, without hinderance from any one, from this day for ever. Thou art therefore free for any man (who would marry thee). Let this be thy bill of divorce from me, a writing of separation and expulsion, according to the law of Moses and Israel.
REUBEN, son of Jacob, Witness.
ELIEZAR, son of Gilead, Witness.
The “certificate” or “bill of divorcement,” according to the International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia, was “a certificate given by a husband to a wife, so as to afford her the opportunity or privilege of marrying another man.” That is clear from the document itself as well as from the two Hebrew words, cepher kerithuth, from which that concept is translated (Deuteronomy 24:1). According to Strong’s Hebrew Dictionary, the word cepher signifies a writing, a book, a bill, an evidence, a letter, a register, a scroll. It carried the powers of a judicial document, and it was. The second word, kerithuth, according to the same dictionary, meant “a cutting (of the matrimonial bond), i.e. divorce:–divorce(-ment).” In other words, the certificate of divorcement was a book of cutting off, divorce, severance.
- Death and Remarriage
In Romans 7:1-3, Paul presents another occasion by which a marriage bond could stand broken, and the partners free to remarry, if they wish to: the death of one partner.
1 Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth?
2 For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband.
3 So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man (Romans 7:1-3).
In this New Testament passage, Paul applies a principle derived from the Old Testament, specifically from the Torah, “the law.” Paul makes the same point in 1 Corinthians 7:39-40, that a wife was released from the marriage bond by the death of the husband; the release implying that she could remarry, which is implicit in all legal divorces. The opposite was applicable to the man if he lost the wife. Paul was not directly talking about marriage in that passage, but brought marriage in as a metaphor for explaining law and grace. All the same, it made the point about the power of death to dissolve a marriage, and the guilt of one partner if they ‘married’ another “while her husband liveth,” while a previous relationship still technically stood. But Paul was not done. There could be other grounds, apart from death, for a separation that validates remarriage.
From The Preacher’s diary,
July 20, 2021.
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Watch out for:
- Desertion: If the unbelieving should depart…
- Defining the unbeliever
- Did Paul contradict himself?
- Obeying Paul or Christ?
- Resolving The Samaritan Puzzle
- The Old Testament of Jesus
- God Hates Divorce
- Hardness of Heart
- What God has Joined Together
- etc
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