Matthew 19:6

“So that they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.”

And once the two have been joined in this way they are ‘one flesh'. They thereby reflect the image of God, the image of God's own unity. Thus what God has joined together man must not try to separate. To break such a unity would thus be to sin grievously against God. This is not ‘just another sin'. It is to offend God drastically. It is to destroy His purpose in creation. It is to tear apart what He has put together.

The idea of ‘one flesh' comes from the fact that woman was seen as originally taken out of man. She was ‘bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh' (Genesis 2:23). Thus by sexual union they were seen as again becoming ‘one flesh'. They formed ‘one man' made up of two necessary parts. To separate them once they were thus united was therefore to be seen as the same thing as decapitating a man and destroying God's handywork.

We should note from this Jesus' emphasis on the inviolability of the marriage bond. For Jesus it was not something that was under the man's control, and that could be kept or broken to order. The union was sacred, and any breach of it a travesty. It was sealed in the sight of God, and there was no breaking it without it involving a deep sin against God. The man and woman who have had sexual relations before God are thereby bound together by Him with a heavenly tie that cannot be broken. That is why the act of adultery is such a great sin. It breaks God's handywork and attacks His very purpose in creation. Like the Israelites did, we look around for some way in which we can break it ‘lawfully'. But there is no way. It can only be done by an act of deep sin.

People talk as though if Jesus was alive today He would somehow be soft on sexual sin. They argue that if He had lived now He would have seen the error of His ways and would have agreed with them (is it not strange how people always think that He would take their side of the argument?). They argue that He was simply a child of His times. But here we learn differently. In a society where Hillel was seen as proclaiming the norm in allowing easy divorce, and where Shammai was seen as the tough one who tended to be a little hard, Jesus was in fact very much tougher than either of them. He was far from being a child of His times. Rather He leaned on the authority of Scripture. For while Shammai was certainly more strict than Hillel, he nevertheless accepted the divorces of those who were divorced under Hillel's precepts and allowed them to remarry without it being seen as wrong. Jesus, however, declares that such a marriage is adultery and therefore forbidden. Jesus sees no place for broken marriages, or for the remarriage of the one who has broken the original marriage, within the purposes of God.

Jesus was thus introducing a ‘new' concept of marriage which was to be observed under the Kingly Rule of Heaven. By it He was indicating that a new state of affairs was beginning. This was a sign that the Kingly Rule of Heaven had now commenced, making demands upon people the like of which had not been known before.

The quotation reveals traces of the Septuagint. This confirms that at least some of what Matthew was saying was taken from Mark, for when Matthew ‘goes LXX' it is usually due to the influence of Mark.

Brief Note on Divorce in the Old Testament.

There is nowhere in the Law of Moses any specific dealing with the with the question of an ‘allowable' divorce in a marriage between two of God's people, that is, of two people within God's favour. The Pharisees had sought one and had made use of Deuteronomy 24:1 for that purpose. But that was because they had failed to see what Jesus had now brought to their attention, and that was that in God's eyes anything that caused a separation between a man and woman who had been united in God's eyes was not permissible under any circumstances. They were made one by the sexual act and must remain one until death broke the bond. That was why adultery had to result in death. It was to break that oneness. And the only remedy for that was death so as to maintain the principle. Having destroyed what God had put together they too must be destroyed.

Deuteronomy 24:1 was therefore describing a position which was unallowable in God's eyes and yet which had to be legislated for because it happened. In it God was not giving approval for divorce, but was seeking to legislate for two things. Firstly the protection of a woman who, as a result of the custom which was against His purpose, had been thrown out by her husband, and secondly the prevention of something that was abhorrent to Him. In the first case she was to be given a bill of divorce so as to protect her from false accusations which might be made in the future. In the second she must never remarry her first husband once she has been married to another, even if her second husband has died. That would be to treat lightly the unbreakable oneness of the initial marriage. It would be to make a mockery of marriage as though it was something to be entered into haphazardly. It would slight God, Who would not unite again what man had put asunder against His will.

What can be said about this case in Deuteronomy is that the only grounds on which divorce was even explicitly allowed to stand (without all guilty parties being put to death) was in the case of a situation where the woman had been divorced because of ‘the nakedness of a matter'. It was this that Moses had allowed because of the hardness of men's hearts. But it was not giving explicit permission for it, it was legislating for what should be done once it had happened ‘by custom'. And it was the definition of that phrase ‘the nakedness of the matter' that caused the disagreement between Shammai and Hillel. However, in the Law of Moses ‘nakedness' is usually associated with sexual sin, which was Shammai's contention, and was probably how Jesus saw it in view of His ‘except in the case of porneia (sexual sin)'.

The point about sexual sin was that it, as it were, cancelled out the marriage bond because it had interfered with the oneness sexually between a man and a woman. What was meant by sexual sin is open to question, but it would seem that it was something that was seen as grossly indecent. While adultery was supposed to result in the death sentence for both parties there were probably many cases where that course was not pursued, especially when they had not been caught in the act, and in the cases of suspected adultery the woman may have chosen divorce rather than trial before the sanctuary, and been allowed it by her husband (compare how Joseph was willing to put away Mary privately for her then supposed sexual misconduct). This may thus be what was mainly in mind here. Or it may have included other sexual behaviour which was seen as exceptionally disgraceful and as destroying the oneness between the man and the woman.

God's true view of a divorced person was made clear in that a priest was not to marry a divorced person, for a divorced woman was seen as ‘defiled' and ‘unholy'. They were displeasing to God and outside His sphere of holiness (Leviticus 21:7; Leviticus 21:24; etc.). However, the fact that divorced women were allowed to live and remain within the camp demonstrates that they could be tolerated at a distance from the Sanctuary, something which could be seen as a concession on God's part. It did not, however, give them His permission to divorce.

There were, however, certain circumstances in which ‘divorce' was permitted, and these were to do with cases of marriages between someone under God's covenant and someone outside that covenant (see Deuteronomy 21:10; Ezra 10; Exodus 21:7, see our commentary). That was why Paul later had to ‘legislate' to allow for such marriages to continue in the case of a Christian (1 Corinthians 7:12). But concerning marriages between two persons within God's covenant God declared ‘I hate divorce' and forbade it (Malachi 2:15).

End of note.