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The
exception clause of Matthew 19:9 has often been used to support breaking up
marriages and imposing celibacy when a divorce has taken place and the divorce
was not for fornication. The word for fornication comes from porneia,
which involves incest. It is important to note that Jesus could not have meant adultery, in speaking to the Jews at the
time, because adultery was never a
reason for divorce—“uncleanness,” or “some unseemly thing” (ASV), was something
different (Deut 24:1-2).
Recently,
Yahoo news reported a case that illustrates what Jesus was really teaching,
regarding the exception clause.
Fri Jan 11, 12:15 PM ET LONDON (AFP) - Twins who were separated at
birth and adopted by different sets of parents later married each other without
realizing they were brother and sister, a peer has told the House of Lords.
David Alton, an independent, pro-life member of the
Lords, said the brother and sister were granted an annulment after a high court
judge ruled that the marriage had never validly existed.
In
view of the factual case documented above let us take another look at the
context of an often misused MDR text:
Matthew 19:9 And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put
away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another,
committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit
adultery. 10 His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his
wife, it is not good to marry.
Many
have tried to use verse 10 to support the idea that adultery is committed by
those who are divorced and that those who marry after a divorce, commit
adultery and the ones they marry commit adultery as well. However, for Jesus'
disciples to have thought that to be true they would have had to understand him
to be teaching contrary to the Law. If that were the case, the response would
have been: “But Lord, the Law has always allowed the woman who was given a bill
of divorcement to go be another man's wife.” And of course the Pharisees would
have used such a comment to destroy the Lord. The disciples' statement was
actually in perfect agreement with what is being taught in this article.
"If the case of the man be so with his wife (or woman, rw) it is not good
to marry." Surely the disciples understood Jesus to be talking about a case like, or similar, to the one noted
in the article above.
The
couple (twins) in the recent news did not need a legal divorce because they
were not legally married—the relationship was incestuous. They needed to do what Jesus taught; being married to
each other, they were committing fornication—the same fornication to which
Jesus was referring. Therefore, they needed to separate. They did not need a divorce because their marriage was
invalid, being incestuous.
Such
illicit marriages were common in Old Testament days. In Ezra 10:2-11, we have
an example where the taking of foreign wives was confessed as sinful and a
covenant was made with God to “put away” the strange forbidden wives. It is
interesting that God said “separate” yourselves from them, to include the children
(verse 3), and that divorce proceedings were not mentioned. Also, after the
Babylonian captivity records were nonexistent. Therefore, it was often
impossible to know for sure if a marriage was legal/scriptural. At any rate,
fornication, due to an illicit marriage, was all Jesus was talking about when
he mentioned the exception to a man’s putting away a woman and marrying
another. The two versions noted below support the point just made:
New Jerusalem
But I say this to you, everyone who divorces his wife,
except for the case of an illicit marriage, makes her an adulteress; and anyone
who marries a divorced woman commits adultery. Mt 5:32.
New American
with Apocrypha
I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the
marriage is unlawful) and marries another commits adultery. Matthew 19:9.
In
Mark’s account, Jesus makes it clear that the sin in question is against the wife that is put away, unless this sending away is
justified because of an illicit marriage.
He tells us the “adultery” is “against her” rather than with the woman the man
marries (Mark 10:11). This being true, according to the Law, if there is in
fact a divorce, the sin of adultery is not committed. Thus, the English phrase
“put away,” translated from the Greek word apoluo,
must mean only what lexicographers give as its primary meaning, rather than the
meaning that has been assumed due to misunderstanding of Jesus’ teachings.
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