True Righteousness – divorce and oaths
The fourth antithesis concerns divorce, which was never commanded but was permitted in certain circumstances and on certain conditions. Jesus is contrasting what the people have heard with the new standards of his kingdom. Let’s continue our deep dive into how this law in the Torah was carried out then and how this applies to us today.
Instructions about divorce
Matt 5:31-32: “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ 32 But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery,* and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”
*NIV-“He makes her a victim of adultery.”
Read Deut 24:1-4
- Notice the law is framed from a male's point of view
- It mentions some indecency, something objectionable or shameful, “nakedness of a matter/thing.” According to Tim Mackie, it’s a dense, ambiguous little phrase, and was interpreted in very different ways. Amy-Jill Levine says: The Hebrew behind “something objectionable” or “a matter of impropriety” is not necessarily sexual because the same phrase ‘ervat davar (heb), appears in Deut 23:14 in the context of digging trenches for latrines. The term thus concerns something unpleasant or disgusting.
This discussion on how to interpret what “nakedness” or “indecency” means in Deuteronomy 24, had been an age-old debate down through to the first century to Jesus’ time between the Rabbis and the teachers of the Law. There were two schools of thought:
- School of Rabbi Shammai takes a strict view and says a man may not divorce his wife unless he has found unchastity (nakedness or indecency) in her which he takes to mean adultery. (Some matter where she was naked with another person.) Or if the husband found that his bride was not a virgin.
- School of Rabbi Hillel takes a more relaxed view on this subject and says it means any matter of indecency is left up to the man's judgment and thinks it's for any cause like if she spoiled his food or if he has found someone more beautiful than his current wife.
Amy Jill Levine - Of the 613 laws in the Torah that God gave to guide the people of Israel, only two of them have anything to say about divorce and neither of them address it directly. And as rabbinic Judaism developed, restrictions on divorce lessened, so for any and every reason was a very broad interpretation and more likely the normative way of reading the text and understanding divorce in the first century Jewish world.
Certificate of Divorce: Since marriage was a covenant, that is, a contractual relationship, in ancient Israel paperwork needed to be drawn up in order to dissolve the relationship. This certificate of divorce is called in Hebrew a get in the ancient world and gave a woman the right to remarry. Jewish women had marriage contracts called ketubah which is much like a prenuptial agreement providing them economic support in case of a divorce. (See Jer 2:1 Israel’s unfaithfulness; 3:8 God sent her away with certificate of divorce; 4:1 then told her to return to him.)
On Sexual Immorality/grounds for divorce
This from Amy-Jill Levine: “Grounds of unchastity” (sexual immorality) (Greek Logou porneias) from which we get the word pornography, is vague and encompasses a host of problems, as is the Hebrew term ervat davar. Into this category falls not only infidelity, but also desertion, spousal abuse, loss of affection, homosexuality (and now transgenderism), various forms of addiction for which the person refuses to get help, and so on. Not all married couples are joined together by God. Not all marriages are made in heaven. Far too many people have been trapped in loveless or abusive marriages because of a narrow reading of Gospel passages. The message of the text is one of peace, not war; it speaks of the Christian home as the model of the love between Christ and the church. Christian marriages that do not offer this model are, perhaps, not those that need remain forever. - AJL
On Adultery
Lev 20:10: If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.
Amy-Jill Levine: Adultery is infidelity by either husband or wife, and at the time of Jesus, a Jewish man would have sexual relations with a divorcee, a prostitute, or an otherwise unmarried and engaged woman. Whether Jews in the Second Temple period were executing people guilty of adultery remains an open question, and as far as I can determine, they were not.
Notice the men had all this power so why were they still having this debate and asking Jesus about it? The Pharisees were asking him a question that was so controversial and loaded and Jesus’ answer to their question was: ‘Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning’ (Matthew 19:7-8). That was a concession and Jesus is extending it from not remarrying the first wife to forbidding divorce and remarriage except for sexual immorality. (I Corin 7:10-11). And that’s probably not what they wanted to hear.
Tim Mackie: These words of Jesus about marriage, and divorce, and remarriage is a pretty complicated debate about a real practical matter in Jesus’ time and have had a huge, huge influence, to say the least, on the course of millions of people's lives over the last 2000 years. There is a diversity of views on the implications of what Jesus is saying and what he actually means. But that raises the interesting question then, should we view Jesus’ teachings as the comprehensive definition, or more focused and particular, because he doesn't elaborate very much, outside of this one particular debate. Real life and real marriage and divorce is way more complicated and may not always boil down to adultery, because there are lots of other reasons that covenant faithfulness can be violated. Whatever Jesus’ response is, this is not His complete teachings on marriage and divorce and remarriage. His teaching here needs to be understood in light of that debate, about that very specific question about ‘can divorce be for any reason.’ TM/BP
INSTRUCTION ABOUT OATHS - Matt 5:33-37
What’s the difference between a vow, an oath, and to swear?
An Oath is a solemn promise made between individuals, or to a higher authority, that involves invoking God's name or a deity (sacred entity) as a witness to ensure its truthfulness and enforce its fulfillment. (Assuming that the deity would avenge/or punish him/her should they break it.)
Some purposes for an oath
- To establish or solidify a commitment between individuals to ensure truthfulness and to guarantee the authenticity of a promise, with the implicit understanding of accountability for breaking the oath.
- To affirm truth, like in court, where a witness swears to tell the truth.
- To uphold a position like an oath of office when a government official takes an oath to uphold the law, or a military oath to defend a country.
- A notary public administering an oath.
- To make people believe you can be trusted.
But as A.M. Hunter says: Oaths arise because men are so often liars.
Swearing is the act of taking an oath. To forswear is to swear falsely.
A Vow is a solemn promise made directly to a higher power, e.g God or a spiritual entity, with no other human party directly involved in the promise itself.
Purpose: A commitment to dedicate oneself or possession to perform a specific act, service, way of life, resources, or time to God, which is often long-lasting or permanent.
Some examples of making a vow
- A wedding vow
- A monastic vow of celibacy or silence
- A personal pledge made in a moment of great need for divine intervention
- A Nazarite vow to abstain from certain things
- A vow to dedicate a child to God's service.
Jesus’ teaching on truth-telling
James Montgomery Boice: Apparently in Jesus’ day, in Palestine, the taking of oaths had been greatly abused. There was the frivolous oath when people would take oaths and swear when it was neither necessary nor proper, by swearing by their life or something else. And then there was the evasive oath where others who were afraid to swear by the name of the Lord because they were not telling the truth began to swear on things, and because things were not thought to be as significant as the name of God, their oaths were not considered to be binding (and they can weasel out of it).
Hard Saying of the Bible: “To swear an oath falsely in the name of God was a sin not only against the name but against the very person of God. Later the scope of the commandment (Ex20:7) was broadened to include any light or thoughtless use of the divine name, to the point where it was judged safest not to use it at all. Realizing the seriousness of swearing by God, if the truth of the statement was not absolutely sure, people tended to replace the name of God by something else – by heaven, by the temple or the gold on the temple – with the idea that a slight deviation from the truth would then be less unpardonable. Some who ruled said that vows were more binding or less binding according to the precise wording of the oath by which they were sworn (Matt 23:16-22). This, of course, is ethical trifling or making a type of loophole to manipulate, exploit or take advantage of each other. And so, Jesus’ point is anything that you would even try to swear by is God's creation and you're implying God in any oath you take.”
Dallas Willard in The Divine Conspiracy says: “The essence of swearing an oath that Jesus targets here, is about invoking something or someone else, especially God, to make your words seem more significant and more weighty. The aim is to impress others with your seriousness or your piety, so that you get what you want. It's a device of manipulation, designed to override the judgment or input of others, in order to possess them for our purposes. It's manipulation, or as we say in our culture, spin. And Jesus says it's evil. Instead of loving and honoring others with truthfulness, the intent is to get one's way, by verbal manipulation of the thoughts and choices of others.”
Ecclesiastes 5:4-5 says: “it is better not to vow than to make a vow and not fulfill it” and maybe that is what Jesus is saying in Matt 5:33-37, “Let your yes be yes, and your no be no; anything beyond this comes from evil (or the evil one).
