The crusade had been advertised for weeks. Banners hung over the expressway, and a convoy of buses brought people from every corner of Lagos to the open ground where the stage had been built. By ten o’clock on the Friday night the place was full. The choir had sung for an hour. The generators roared behind the stage. And the guest preacher, a big man in a white suit, had reached the part of his message where his voice climbed and the crowd leaned forward.
“Write this down!” he shouted. “God hates divorce! Malachi two sixteen! If you are divorced, you are living outside the will of God. Somebody shout, God hates divorce!”
Thousands of voices shouted it back.
Near the back, on a plastic chair at the end of a row, a woman I will call Uju sat very still. She was forty-four, an accountant at a firm in Ikeja, and she had come with her cousin because her cousin had insisted. Eighteen months earlier, her husband of twelve years had moved to Abuja for a new position. Within a year he had another woman there, and a baby on the way. He told Uju by phone that the marriage was over. She had begged him to come home. She had gone to his family. She had fasted for forty days. He filed for divorce anyway, and the court dissolved the marriage while she was still praying for it to be saved.
Now, under the floodlights, she heard the crowd roaring that God hated what had happened to her life. She did not hear anything about the man who had left. She did not hear anything about the woman who had been sent away. All she heard was a verdict, and the verdict seemed to fall on her.
She stood up quietly before the altar call, told her cousin she had a headache, and took a keke home alone.
When she told me this story a year later, she asked me a question I have never forgotten. “Pastor, is that really what the Bible says about me?”
A slogan is not a reading
The preacher was quoting a real verse. In the King James Version, Malachi 2:16 reads, “For the LORD, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away.” But a verse lifted from its setting can be made to say almost anything, and this one has been made to say things Malachi never meant.
Read the whole passage. Malachi is rebuking the men of Judah who were divorcing the wives of their youth, often to marry younger, foreign women who worshipped other gods. “The LORD hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously: yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant” (Malachi 2:14). God hated the putting away because of what it did to these women. They were being discarded by men who had made covenant with them before God. The same verse adds that such a man “covereth violence with his garment.”
In other words, Malachi 2:16 was spoken in defence of women like Uju. The divine anger in that verse fell on the husband who dealt treacherously, and its sympathy lay with the wife he abandoned. To shout the verse at a woman whose husband left her, as though it were a condemnation of her, is to turn the text upside down.
That is the danger of slogans. A slogan is short enough to shout and easy to remember, but it carries none of the context, none of the questions being answered and none of the people involved. Jesus and the apostles did not speak about divorce in slogans. They answered particular questions, asked by particular people, in particular settings. If we want to know what they actually taught, we have to read patiently.
PunchlineThe New Testament speaks about divorce in answer to specific questions. A single slogan cannot serve as God’s verdict on every divorced person in the room.
What Moses actually wrote
Every New Testament discussion of divorce looks back to one passage in the law:
When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man’s wife . And if the latter husband hate her, and write her a bill of divorcement, and giveth it in her hand, and sendeth her out of his house; or if the latter husband die, which took her to be his wife; Her former husband, which sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after that she is defiled; for that is abomination before the LORD : and thou shalt not cause the land to sin, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.
This passage is often misunderstood. It does not command divorce. Nor does it list approved reasons for it. It assumes that divorce was already happening in Israel, and it regulates one situation: a woman who has been divorced, has married again, and has then been divorced or widowed a second time. In that case, her first husband may not take her back. The main command is in verse 4.
But the passage tells us several things along the way. First, a husband who sent his wife away had to “write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand.” That written certificate protected the woman. It proved she was no longer married and could not be accused of adultery if she remarried. Second, the passage assumes that “she may go and be another man’s wife.” In the ancient world, a certificate of divorce was precisely a document of release. Third, the ground for the divorce is described with a vague phrase: “some uncleanness in her.” The Hebrew means literally a nakedness of a thing, and nobody in Jesus’ day agreed exactly what it meant.
That vagueness created the debate the Pharisees brought to Jesus. The school of Shammai read the phrase strictly, as sexual misconduct or something close to it. The school of Hillel read it so loosely that a man could divorce his wife for burning his dinner or simply because he found someone more attractive. By Jesus’ time, the looser view had become very common in practice. A man could send his wife away for almost anything, and she had little say in it.
The question at Herod’s border
Matthew sets the scene carefully. Jesus “departed from Galilee, and came into the coasts of Judaea beyond Jordan” (Matthew 19:1). That region beyond the Jordan was ruled by Herod Antipas, the very ruler who had imprisoned and beheaded John the Baptist. And why had John been arrested? Because he had told Herod, concerning Herodias, “It is not lawful for thee to have her” (Matthew 14:4). Herod had divorced his own wife and married his brother’s wife, and John had condemned it publicly.
So when the Pharisees came to Jesus in Herod’s territory and asked, “Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?” (Matthew 19:3), the question was not innocent. Matthew says they came “tempting him.” Whatever He said, He risked offending someone. If He sided with Hillel, He would seem to approve of easy divorce. If He sided with Shammai, He would offend many ordinary people. If He condemned divorce too strongly, He might share John’s fate.
As we saw in the previous article, Jesus began by going back to creation: “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Matthew 19:6). Then the conversation continued:
They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. 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.
Notice the change of verbs. The Pharisees said Moses commanded divorce. Jesus said Moses suffered, or permitted, it. The law did not command men to send their wives away. It allowed it, under regulation, “because of the hardness of your hearts.” It was a concession to sin, designed to restrain its worst effects. “But from the beginning it was not so.”
Then Jesus gave His own ruling. “Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery.” The word translated fornication is the Greek porneia, a broad term for sexual immorality. Jesus was rejecting the Hillel view entirely. A man could not dissolve his marriage for any cause he pleased and then marry someone else with a clear conscience. If he did, the second marriage was adulterous in God’s sight, because in God’s sight the first marriage had not been rightly ended.
Christians have read the exception “except it be for fornication” in more than one way. The most common reading takes porneia as sexual unfaithfulness within marriage, so that adultery is a ground on which divorce, and on many readings remarriage, may be permitted. Others think it refers to unfaithfulness during the betrothal period, which in Jewish custom was already legally binding. Others again link it to marriages within the forbidden degrees of kinship listed in Leviticus 18, which were never valid marriages to begin with. Each reading has able defenders. What none of them allows is the casual divorce that the Pharisees were defending.
Mark’s account and a surprising phrase
Mark records the same encounter, but with differences that matter:
And the Pharisees came to him, and asked him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife? tempting him. And he answered and said unto them, What did Moses command you? And they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and to put her away. And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept. But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. And in the house his disciples asked him again of the same matter . And he saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery.
In Mark, the Pharisees ask simply whether it is lawful for a man to put away his wife at all, and the exception clause does not appear. Then Jesus speaks privately to His disciples “in the house,” and says two things that Matthew does not include.
First, a man who puts away his wife and marries another “committeth adultery against her.” That phrase would have startled His hearers. In the thinking of that time, adultery was usually understood as an offence against a husband. A man who slept with another man’s wife wronged her husband. A married man who took a second woman was often not thought to have wronged his own wife in the same way. Jesus overturns that. A husband can commit adultery against his wife. She is a person in her own right, with her own claim on his faithfulness. Here, in a single phrase, is the dignity of Genesis 2 restored.
Second, Jesus speaks of a woman who puts away her husband. Under most Jewish practice a wife could not initiate divorce, though she could sometimes ask a court to compel her husband to release her. Under Roman law, however, a woman could divorce her husband, and Mark was writing for readers who lived in that world. Jesus’ teaching applies equally to both. The standard is the same for wife and husband.
Why does Mark leave out the exception that Matthew includes? Some believe that Matthew’s exception was understood by everyone and did not need repeating, much as no one needed to be told that a woman whose husband had been unfaithful was the injured party. Others believe that Mark preserves Jesus’ basic teaching in its sharpest form, and that Matthew’s exception should be read narrowly. Luke, too, records a short saying without the exception: “Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery” (Luke 16:18). How these accounts fit together is one of the real questions in this subject, and honest interpreters disagree.
The Sermon on the Mount
Earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus addressed divorce in the Sermon on the Mount, as one of His six contrasts between what had been said and what He now said:
It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement: But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.
The setting here is Jesus’ teaching that the righteousness of His kingdom goes deeper than outward conformity to the law. Just before these verses, He has said that looking at a woman with lust is already adultery of the heart. Now He turns to men who were technically obeying the law by giving their wives a certificate, while treating marriage as disposable.
Look closely at what Jesus says. The man who puts away his wife, except for sexual immorality, “causeth her to commit adultery.” In that society a divorced woman with no income and no family support would almost certainly need to marry again in order to survive. Jesus lays the responsibility for that situation on the husband who sent her away. He is the one who set her on that road. The weight of His words falls on the man with power, the one who chose to break the marriage.
Matthew’s Gospel also gives us an interesting example from its very first chapter. When Joseph discovered that Mary, his betrothed, was with child, Scripture says:
Then Joseph her husband, being a just man , and not willing to make her a publick example, was minded to put her away privily.
Joseph is called “a just man.” He believed Mary had been unfaithful during their betrothal, and he planned to end the betrothal, which in Jewish custom required a formal divorce. And Scripture does not count his intention as sin. It calls him just, and it also shows his mercy, because he did not want to shame her publicly. Those who read the exception clause as referring to betrothal often point to this passage. Whatever one concludes about that, Joseph’s example shows that a person can be righteous and still consider ending a covenant that seems to have been broken, and that righteousness and mercy can belong together even then.
Paul’s answer to the Corinthians
Some years later, the church in Corinth wrote Paul a letter full of questions about marriage. Some in the church seem to have thought that sexual relations were unspiritual and that married believers should separate. Others had married unbelievers before they came to faith and wondered whether they ought to leave. Paul’s answer in 1 Corinthians 7 is pastoral and precise.
To married believers he writes, “And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband” (1 Corinthians 7:10). Paul is quoting the teaching of Jesus, which he knew. He adds that if she does depart, she should “remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband: and let not the husband put away his wife” (1 Corinthians 7:11). The next article in this series looks more closely at those verses and at the difference between separation and divorce. For now, notice that Paul expects the teaching of Jesus to be obeyed, and also that he is realistic. He knows that departures happen, and he gives guidance for the believer who has already left.
Then Paul turns to a situation Jesus had not addressed. “But to the rest speak I, not the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:12). He is not lowering the authority of what follows. He is telling the Corinthians honestly that Jesus did not speak to this exact case during His earthly ministry, so Paul, as an apostle, will. The case is a believer married to an unbeliever. If the unbelieving spouse is willing to stay, the believer should not leave. The marriage is holy, and the children are holy (1 Corinthians 7:14).
“But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us to peace” (1 Corinthians 7:15). The word for bondage is a strong one. It is related to the word for a slave. The believer whose unbelieving spouse has walked out is not enslaved to that marriage. What exactly that freedom includes is disputed. Some read it as freedom to remarry. Others read it as freedom from any obligation to chase the departing spouse or prevent the separation, while still not permitting remarriage. Again, careful Christians land in different places.
Three readings held by sincere believers
NuggetWhen all these passages are read together, Christians have arrived at three broad positions. I want to set them out fairly, because I have met humble, godly believers who hold each one.
The first view holds that marriage is permanent while both spouses live. Divorce may happen in law, and separation may sometimes be necessary, but the marriage bond is not dissolved in God’s sight, so remarriage while a former spouse is alive is not permitted. Those who hold this view stress Mark 10 and Luke 16, where the exception does not appear, along with Paul’s command that a departing wife remain unmarried or be reconciled.
The second view holds that Scripture permits divorce, with freedom to remarry, on two grounds: sexual unfaithfulness, from Matthew 5 and 19, and desertion by an unbelieving spouse, from 1 Corinthians 7:15. This has been a common view among Protestant churches since the Reformation, and it is found in several historic confessions of faith.
The third view understands those two grounds as examples of a wider principle: a marriage covenant can be broken by one party’s grave and persistent violation of it. On this reading, abuse, abandonment and similar betrayals may also break the covenant. Those who hold it point to Exodus 21:10-11, where a wife who was denied food, clothing and marital care was to go free, and argue that Jesus and Paul were answering specific questions without listing every possible case.
I am not going to tell you which of these you must hold. Each is taught by people who love Scripture and honour marriage. If you face this question personally, please do not settle it from a crusade microphone or a social media post. Sit down with a mature, trusted pastor who knows the Bible and knows your situation, and work through the passages slowly.
What all three views share is just as important. Every one of them takes marriage seriously as a covenant before God. Every one of them rejects divorce for convenience. And every one of them recognises that abuse is never a covenant obligation. No view of divorce requires a husband or wife to remain in danger. Anyone who is being harmed should seek safety, the help of the authorities and qualified support, whatever they later conclude about the future of the marriage.
Reading these words with real people in front of us
When Jesus taught on divorce, He was speaking against powerful men who were discarding their wives and calling it lawful. When Paul wrote, he was guiding believers who wanted to obey the Lord in complicated households. In both cases, the teaching protected the vulnerable and restrained the careless.
Our use of these passages should do the same. There is a great difference between the husband who leaves a faithful wife for another woman and the wife who is left. There is a difference between the spouse who walks away from a marriage casually and the spouse who fled for her life. There is a difference between a person who is planning a divorce for selfish reasons and a person who was divorced against their will years ago and is now trying to raise children alone. A single slogan treats all of these people the same. Jesus never did.
Churches need to hold two things together. We must teach that God’s design for marriage is lifelong faithfulness, and we must not soften that for the sake of popularity. And we must be places where divorced people can sit in the front row without shame, receive pastoral care, serve in ministry where their character qualifies them, and hear the gospel preached to them as to everyone else. Divorce is not the unforgivable sin. Where there has been sin in the breakdown of a marriage, on either side, the blood of Jesus cleanses it as fully as it cleanses any other sin. Where there has been betrayal, the betrayed person needs comfort far more than suspicion.
The Golden Rule applies here as everywhere: “all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” (Matthew 7:12). If your own marriage had broken, how would you want your church to speak to you?
A few weeks after Uju asked me her question, she came to a small Bible study in our church on a Wednesday evening. There were seven of us around a table in the side room, with a standing fan that made the pages flutter. We read Malachi 2 together, slowly, verse by verse. Then we read Mark 10.
When we reached verse 11, she stopped me. “Read that part again.”
“Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her.”
Punchline“Against her,” Uju repeated. She sat back in her chair. “So when he left, God was not looking at me as the guilty one. He saw what was done against me.”
“Yes,” I said. “Malachi says God was the witness at your wedding. He saw the vows made, and He saw them broken. And He was not standing with the man who broke them.”
She cried a little, quietly, and the woman beside her held her hand. We did not settle every question that night. There were things she still needed to think and pray through about her future, and she did that over the following months with care and with counsel.
But something had lifted. The verdict she had heard under the floodlights had been taken off her shoulders. She had read what Jesus actually said, in the setting where He said it, and she had found that the Lord who hates the breaking of covenant is also the Lord who stands beside the one it was broken against.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Have you ever heard a single verse about divorce used as a slogan? How does reading it in context change its meaning?
- Why do you think Jesus answered the Pharisees by going back to creation before He spoke about divorce?
- What does the phrase “committeth adultery against her” in Mark 10:11 reveal about how Jesus viewed women?
- Which of the three views of divorce described here are you most familiar with, and what questions does each one raise for you?
- How could your church become a place where divorced people are welcomed and cared for without lowering God’s design for marriage?
This Week
This week, read Deuteronomy 24:1-4, Matthew 19:1-12, Mark 10:2-12 and 1 Corinthians 7:10-16 in one sitting, slowly, with a notebook beside you. For each passage, write down who asked the question, what situation was being addressed, and what the main point of the answer was. If you know a divorced person in your church, take the opportunity this week to greet them warmly, invite them to share a meal, or simply ask how they are doing and listen.
A Prayer
Lord Jesus, thank You for taking marriage seriously, and for defending those who were discarded and wronged. Forgive me where I have used Your words carelessly, as slogans, without the care You showed to the people in front of You. Give me a heart that honours Your design for marriage and also a heart that is gentle toward those whose marriages have broken. Comfort every husband and wife who has been abandoned or betrayed. Where there is sin in my own story, cleanse me, and where I have been wronged, heal me. Make Your church a place of truth and of welcome. In Your name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.