Jesus was not to be shaken from his position by any quotation of ancient authorities. He admitted that Moses had allowed divorce as an expedient, a choice between two evils, but, appealing not to statute but to life, he protested in words his hearers would have regarded as older even than the law of Moses, that such permission was in violation of a primary fact of human society, an undoing of the law of creation, a violation of human nature.
It is a little remarkable, but indicative of the importance Jesus accorded the family, that, not content with thus enunciating a general principle, he should have gone into minuter treatment of this one social relation. His position upon many subjects which are of burning interest today, and, to judge from the writings of the time, were often quite as much so in his own day, is often non-committal, almost always reserved, although occasionally, as in the case of ceremonial uncleanness, he expresses in a pregnant sentence a specific principle. But in the matter of divorce he has left us some of the most explicit legislation the gospels have preserved. Under no circumstances, provided that the marriage union is not actually broken through the unfaithfulness of one of the parties, is a husband to divorce his wife, or a wife her husband.[1] In case there is no such actual breaking of the marriage tie, a husband who puts his wife away, be it never so legally, causes her to be judged as belonging to that class of women who have really given grounds for divorce; he brands her an adulteress.[2] If, on the basis of such divorce she should marry, both she and the new husband commit sin. The original union is still existent. Yet if adultery has actually been committed, the guilty party may be divorced.[3] In such a
- ↑ This addition is noteworthy. It had not been customary among the Jews for wives to divorce their husbands, but about the time of Jesus we meet several cases of its occurrence among the official class. Thus Salome, sister of Herod I, divorced her husband (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 15:8:10), and later Herodias, at least nominally, divorced her husband Herod, in order to live with his brother, Herod Antipas. But the custom was more Roman than Jewish.
- ↑ Matt. 5:32.
- ↑ This view presupposes the exceptive clause in Matt. 5:32 and 19:9. This position is not beyond question, especially since that clause does not appear in Mark
