Matthew 19:1-9, Teaching About Divorce

1 Now when Jesus had finished these sayings, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. 2 And large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.

3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?” 4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” 7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” 8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”

Comments

Chapter 19 begins Jesus’ route to Jerusalem. We know from John’s Gospel that Jesus went to Jerusalem several times over the period of his public ministry. Yet Matthew uses this one trip as a dramatic turn in his gospel for Jesus’ final conflict.

The Pharisees tested Jesus on an explosive topic: divorce. Modern divorce is different. In Israel and its history, the man initiated divorce for any cause, leaving the woman without appeal. Jesus turned to Genesis, showing not only that sexual union was one of God’s creation purposes, but also that that union was to be exclusive and unbreakable. “One flesh” vividly expressed a view of marriage as something deeper than human convenience or social convention. Jesus’ pronouncement, then, saw divorce as man undoing the work of God, and put it in a radically new perspective for the scribes and the Pharisees.

Jesus’ detractors tried to get Jesus to repudiate Moses, but he went before the Law to Creation. Like Moses, Jesus made an exception, knowing the fall keeps us from the marriage ideal. Yet Jesus put the sin squarely on the man.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, our Savior, let us now come to thee:

Our hearts are cold; Lord, warm them with thy selfless love.

Our hearts are sinful; cleanse them with thy precious blood.

Our hearts are weak; strengthen them with thy joyous Spirit.

Our hearts are empty; fill them with thy divine presence.

Lord Jesus, our hearts are thine; possess them always and only for thyself.

(Augustine, 354-430)