Previously we considered the very brief teaching of Jesus on the subject of marriage and divorce in the Sermon on the Mount as recorded in Matthew 5:31-32, and the phrase “except sexual immorality” brought up some unresolved questions. Obviously, Jesus was indicating that there was some condition on which divorce would be acceptable, where the spouse who was put away would not be exposed to adultery through remarriage. But what exact circumstance did Jesus have in mind? Thankfully, Matthew records another instance where this subject came up, when Jesus was approached by a group of Pharisees desiring to test him with a question:
The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?” And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”
They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?”
He said to them, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.”
His disciples said to Him, “If such is the case of the man with his wife, it is better not to marry.”
But He said to them, “All cannot accept this saying, but only those to whom it has been given: for there are eunuchs who were born thus from their mother’s womb, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He who is able to accept it, let him accept it.”
Matthew 19:3-12
This passage gives us a much clearer and more thorough context in which to examine the meaning of the phrase “except for sexual immorality.” But first, we should consider an overview of the entire scene.
Jesus has been approached by a group of religious leaders who have devised what they believe to be a perfect trap. The reason this is so is that by the time of Jesus there were two main camps within Israel on the subject of divorce and the meaning of “some uncleanness” in Deuteronomy 24:1. William Hendriksen helpfully summarizes the issue: “According to Shammai and his followers the reference was to unchastity or adultery. According to Hillel and his disciples the meaning was far broader. They emphasized the words, ‘If then she finds no favor in his eyes,’ and accordingly would allow divorce for the flimsiest reasons, so that the husband could reject his wife if she accidentally served him food that had been slightly burned, or if at home she talked so loud that the neighbors could hear her. If Jesus endorsed the more strict interpretation, favored by Shammai, he would be displeasing the followers of Hillel…On the other hand, if Jesus endorsed the lax – ‘anything will do as ground for divorce’ – interpretation, what would the disciples of Shammai think of him?”
As Jesus proved over and over again, he was more than a match for any who would question him, thinking to catch him in a trap. He responded with a jarring question of his own, “Have you not read…?” Jesus’ question implied that these self-righteous Pharisees had not every really paid attention to the opening chapters of Genesis! In other words, they had allowed their own desire for liberty in this issue to impair their reading of God’s word, so that they were only focused on what mattered to them, not what mattered to God. This is also very clear from their response in v.7 where they brought up the Mosaic “commandment” from Deut. 24. As we noted when we looked at that passage, Moses did not in any way command divorce. In fact, his instructions regulated divorce for the purpose of making it more difficult and thus less common than among Israel’s neighbors. The hidden agenda of both schools of thought on divorce was to replace God’s standard of life-long marriage with a much more convenient man-made standard which allowed for breaking apart a God-ordained union. Even Jesus’ disciples thought this way, since they objected in v.10 that the prospect of life-long marriage without a way out made singleness seem like a better option!
Jesus’ question pushed the issue back to God’s original plan for marriage in the garden of Eden. He affirmed everything that we have already said about marriage: God created two sexes, male and female, and the institution of marriage which would sever all close earthly ties and bind together the two into one flesh. Jesus even went further and drew a conclusion from Genesis 2:24 that man was not qualified to separate that which God himself had joined together. In other words, Jesus clearly affirmed that the divine plan was for one man to marry one woman and for them to remain married for life. Any idea of a man-made standard allowing for divorce is clearly out-of-bounds, as no man has the power to undo that which God has done. It was at this point that the Pharisees brought up the Mosaic exception. Jesus’ response contains the key phrase, “except for sexual immorality;” we will get to that next.