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Divorce and adultery

MichaelZ

MichaelZ

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Mat 5:32 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.

Mat 19:9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.

Mark 10:11 And he said to them, Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her.

Luke 16:18 Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.

It's easy to me to understand that if a man divorce his wife and his wife marry again, the wife commits adultery and the man MAKES his wife commit adultery, according to Mat 5:32.

I wonder if anyone can explain to me that why all other verses say that the man who divorce his wife commit adultery by himself?
 
Matthew uses the word porneia is in 15:19 where it is used alongside of moicheia. The contextual evidence for Matthew’s usage is that he uses the word porneia as something different than adultery. It appears to me that Matthew uses the word porneia in the sense of fornication rather than adultery. The same thinking could be applied in the verses you mentioned.
 
I've been a little leery of the sense of the phrase "commit adultery", as with the English word "commit" one associates in one's mind the idea of "committing" a particular sin or "committing" a particular crime, and it makes "committing adultery" seem to be a matter of whether or not one "breaks the rules" of marriage. I wonder whether a better reading might be "adulterate" rather than "commit adultery". It seems to better fit the sense of Deuteronomy 24, where Moses speaks of a man's wife being defiled when another man marries her. And it also seems to fit the pattern of our Lord Jesus taking the laws given by Moses and working toward the sense. Then the sense of these passages would be something like "You have heard that it was said, 'do not adulterate'. But y'all ought to know that divorcing your wives for 'any cause', just because you want to marry someone else is really just adulterating your wives, so don't think y'all are really keeping the commandment."

I'll throw that out there as what I think He means in these passages, but I'd like to hear what some of you with more knowledge of the original languages think.
 
The problem with the modern translations listed above, is they put Jesus at odds with the scripture in Deut. 24:1 that specified the requirements for a lawful divorce, and states clearly the woman is free to re marry.
The most logical and comprehensive thing I've seen on the subject is this article.
I am fairly certain I would rather be a divorced woman, with a certificate that lets me marry again, then be bound to a man I can find no favor with. It sounds like such a woman would be worse off then biblical slaves, who were not to be returned if they ran away from their master.
 
Joleneakamama said:
The most logical and comprehensive thing I've seen on the subject is this article
Click to expand...
Good find. I liked the article. Going to have to re-read and dissect it but I like it.
 
Joleneakamama said:
The problem with the modern translations listed above, is they put Jesus at odds with the scripture in Deut. 24:1 that specified the requirements for a lawful divorce, and states clearly the woman is free to re marry.
The most logical and comprehensive thing I've seen on the subject is this article.
I am fairly certain I would rather be a divorced woman, with a certificate that lets me marry again, then be bound to a man I can find no favor with. It sounds like such a woman would be worse off then biblical slaves, who were not to be returned if they ran away from their master.
Click to expand...

I can hardly agree with the article, because it could not work with some verse. How can you explain this:
Mat 19: 8 Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.

Did Moses allowed us to divorce or putting away wives because of our hardness of hearts?

I have the following guess about the divorce, I wonder if they are acceptable:

1. According to the Deu 24, man can divorce his wife with any reason, as long as he write a bill of divorce. The divorce is legal thus not a sin. But it's not the original plan of God, it's because man's hardness of their heart.

2. Putting away with out giving bill of divorce is illegal, which forces the woman to commit adultery. There's one exception: the woman had fornication, thus break the covenant of marriage. In this situation, man can divorce a woman legally without giving a bill of divorce, by just putting her away.

3. God hate putting away, whatever they are legally divorce or illegally putting away.
 
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The issue i've read with this verse comes from the bait and switch use of divorce and put away. The english translations occasionally use these terms interchangeably but they really aren't. A man who puts away (kicked out but not lawfully divorced) his wife causes her to commit adultery.

it's been covered a couple times here. I'll see if i can find it using the handy dandy search function

EDIT:
Here you go. Hope you have a couple hours to spare. :)
It covers a bit of everything but does get around to the verse you were talking about.
http://biblicalfamilies.org/forum/threads/divorced-abandoned-put-away-or-kicked-to-the-curb.13430/
 
I think I learned about the "put away" argument from Messianic Scholar, Dr. David Stern's "Messianic Jewish New Testament Commentary".
The concept of putting away was exercised by King David with Michal if you remember. She despised him when he danced before Hashem and in the end David put her away. He also put away all of the pilgashiym (concubines) whom Avshalom His son had defiled.
So there seems to be precedent for some rich polygamists exercising this option.
Another reason why a man in Jewish culture may not wish to fully divorce one of his wives would have been economical.
In the Ketubah (Jewish marriage contract) the man promises to pay his wife x-amount of money if he divorces her.
So he gives her a gett (divorce certificate) and the money promised to her so that she doesn't have to resort to prostitution (in those days) to survive and also so the burden would not be on her father's house to take her in again at their own cost after she'd been used up so to speak.

This is still in practice in the Jewish community (the ketubah, not putting away). Anyway, you can see how someone wanting to save their duckets may be reticent to dole out a divorce and the ancient alimony which accompanied it. Much cheaper just to keep her in the house. It seems Yeshua is dealing with one of the abuses which can happen in polygamous families.
I see the very fact that He deals with this as reforming the polygamous landscape. If monogamy where the only way, nobody would "put away" their wife because they couldn't get another as long as she was not divorced.
**** hope this wasn't all covered in that thread @NetWatchR mentioned; I dont' wanna read it all now and it's locked anyway so if it's not there it has to be added here***
 
Kevin said:
Matthew uses the word porneia is in 15:19 where it is used alongside of moicheia. The contextual evidence for Matthew’s usage is that he uses the word porneia as something different than adultery. It appears to me that Matthew uses the word porneia in the sense of fornication rather than adultery. The same thinking could be applied in the verses you mentioned.
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You're right, πορνεία (porneia) is an interesting word ... I like to see how these Greek words map back to their usage in Hebrew.
Here's the mappings in the LXX along with number of times for that Hebrew word:

תַּזְנוּת—whoring; illegal-sex (15x): Eze 16:15, 22, 25, 33, 34, 36; 23:7, 8, 11, 14, 17, 18, 19, 29, 35
זְנוּנִים—forbidden sex-acts; prostitution (10x): Ge 38:24; 2 kings 9:22; Eze 23:11, 29; Hos 1:2; 2:2, 4; 4:12; 5:4; Nah 3:4
זְנוּת—forbidden sex-acts: (9x): Nu 14:33; Jer 3:2, 9; 13:27; Eze 23:27; 43:7, 9; Hos 4:11; 6:10
זֹנָה—prostitute (3x): Jer 2:20; Eze 16:41; Mic 1:7

I avoid the English word "fornication" because in the original Hebrew context it usually means going after other gods.
I think fornication as a word is another casualty of just being a cognate word. I'm not promoting unmarried sex but this, in my understanding, is not porneia.
It's used in Old Testament to be prostitution and going after other gods.
It can also be forbidden sex acts (i.e. incest, beastiality or just sleeping with an Amonite).
Part of the problem with this Greek word is that it maps to several underlying Hebrew words... it's less specific. Conflate that with church traditions and English word "fornication" undergoing changes. @andrew any insight from the Latin or middle/old English here?
 
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The only thing I've got off the top of my head is that "fornicate" derives from the Latin "fornix", for vault or arch, which is where the brothels were back in good ol' Rome, so fornicate almost literally means prostitution, at least etymologically. What that means in my brain, looking at the way the word usage has evolved to include basically any sex outside of a lawful marriage, is that any kind of non-married sex is a kind of prostitution.

Either you are having sex in the context of a lifetime commitment, which is the best environment for child rearing, which is the biological purpose of sex, or you are having sex for fun in a casual or pseudo-committed relationship, which means you are trading something quid pro quo to get what you want. Just because it's "dinner and a movie" instead of hard cash doesn't mean it's not prostitution....

(Interesting sideline: "Prostitute" is Latin for "put your stuff out there", so arguably (etymologically) any woman who is "putting her stuff" in front of you (say, with immodest dress...) is a prostitute. Admittedly, the sense of it is that she's putting herself out there 'on the market', or 'on offer', but that's a grey area, not a bright line.)
 
IshChayil said:
I think I learned about the "put away" argument from Messianic Scholar, Dr. David Stern's "Messianic Jewish New Testament Commentary".
The concept of putting away was exercised by King David with Michal if you remember. She despised him when he danced before Hashem and in the end David put her away. He also put away all of the pilgashiym (concubines) whom Avshalom His son had defiled.
So there seems to be precedent for some rich polygamists exercising this option.
Another reason why a man in Jewish culture may not wish to fully divorce one of his wives would have been economical.
In the Ketubah (Jewish marriage contract) the man promises to pay his wife x-amount of money if he divorces her.
So he gives her a gett (divorce certificate) and the money promised to her so that she doesn't have to resort to prostitution (in those days) to survive and also so the burden would not be on her father's house to take her in again at their own cost after she'd been used up so to speak.

This is still in practice in the Jewish community (the ketubah, not putting away). Anyway, you can see how someone wanting to save their duckets may be reticent to dole out a divorce and the ancient alimony which accompanied it. Much cheaper just to keep her in the house. It seems Yeshua is dealing with one of the abuses which can happen in polygamous families.
I see the very fact that He deals with this as reforming the polygamous landscape. If monogamy where the only way, nobody would "put away" their wife because they couldn't get another as long as she was not divorced.
**** hope this wasn't all covered in that thread @NetWatchR mentioned; I dont' wanna read it all now and it's locked anyway so if it's not there it has to be added here***
Click to expand...
This makes so much good sense! Thanks for this angle.
 
andrew said:
The only thing I've got off the top of my head is that "fornicate" derives from the Latin "fornix", for vault or arch, which is where the brothels were back in good ol' Rome, so fornicate almost literally means prostitution, at least etymologically. What that means in my brain, looking at the way the word usage has evolved to include basically any sex outside of a lawful marriage, is that any kind of non-married sex is a kind of prostitution.

Either you are having sex in the context of a lifetime commitment, which is the best environment for child rearing, which is the biological purpose of sex, or you are having sex for fun in a casual or pseudo-committed relationship, which means you are trading something quid pro quo to get what you want. Just because it's "dinner and a movie" instead of hard cash doesn't mean it's not prostitution....

(Interesting sideline: "Prostitute" is Latin for "put your stuff out there", so arguably (etymologically) any woman who is "putting her stuff" in front of you (say, with immodest dress...) is a prostitute. Admittedly, the sense of it is that she's putting herself out there 'on the market', or 'on offer', but that's a grey area, not a bright line.)
Click to expand...
Whole heck of a lot of prostitutes everywhere you go then. Lots of young women (and old) display the goods at any chance they get. Lord help us fathers!
 
ZecAustin said:
Flaming brick in three, two, one.....oh I can't do it. It's just too much energy but boy would it be fun to remind everyone that there is no such thing as sex before marriage and that porneia is a reference back to the Law. There's no need to overcomplicate it. That would be fun but counterproductive so I won't.
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I'm not tracking you. Who said anything about "sex before marriage"?...
 
I said porneia could mean fornication and referenced in Mathew where I implied that it could mean sex before marriage
 
If you mean post #2 above, I guess I just didn't get that implication. Fornication is different from adultery. Yep, pretty sure that's correct. I get that in the culture it's often used to describe "pre-marital sex", I just didn't think that's what we were talking about here....

I did all this research like 25 years ago, so it's coming back in bits, but porneia itself comes from a Greek root that means to sell or traffic, so again, basically means prostitution—the sex trade. Except when it metaphorically means idolatry, to 'sell out' to other gods maybe, or refers specifically to temple/religious prostitutes (prostitution-as-worship?).
 
I was going to ask that talents I thought I did but it doesn't look likely posted it.
 
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^^^ Looks like a dictation malfunction.... :eek:
 
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