Good advice.
There is, sadly, quite a bit of emotional baggage attached to this topic -- mostly because men generally cannot keep their hands off divorced women -- thus empowering women to leave their husbands, which they do at astounding rates. This is an epidemic in our culture.
Yahshua Messiah taught on this topic very plainly. Marriage to a divorced woman is adultery. Divorce does not end a marriage. The bonds of marriage are broken only at death.
- Matthew 5:32 reads, “whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.”
- Matthew 19:9 reads, “whoever marries her who has been put away commits adultery.”
- Mark 10:11-12 reads, “11: And he saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. 12: And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery.”
- Luke 16:18 reads, “Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery.”
Those who claim that it is adultery to marry a divorced woman only if she has received no certificate of divorce fail to contextualize Scriptural teachings on this matter. Yah brings two together to be one flesh, which no man, even with a certificate of divorce, can separate. Mat 19:4-6 reads, “And He answering, said to them, “Did you not read that He who made them at the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 “So that they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what Elohim has joined together, let man not separate.”
Marriage cannot be undone by man -- even with a certificate of divorce.
The marriage contract ends at death, a fact that Shaul explained in Romans chapter 7:2-3, which reads, “For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man.” Even Deuteronomy 24:1-5 gives no license for a woman to be remarried once she is given a bill of divorce and sent away. Read it again in Hebrew; no permission is given.
And the text is plain that a woman who goes to another man is defiled. Scriptures are clear on this point. She is not defiled merely to her first husband but rather simply defiled -- in general. Even biology bears witness to the truth of Scriptures with microchimerism and telegony.
On the matter of a "mistranslation" of the word "divorce", the claim is that Yahshua condemned marriage to “put away” (“apoluō”) women yet tacitly condoned marriage to “divorced” (“apostasion”) women. This claim is in error, because a divorce is a certificate, a noun. "Putting away" is simply a verb. A divorce is a certificate, a writing, written proof that the woman is no longer under her husband’s authority. It is the means by which she is able to prove that her vows cannot be nullified by her husband, thus making here at liberty to conduct her own business affairs with the concern that a meddling husband would override her contracts. Being “put away” is the result of divorce. In other words “put away” is a verb. A “certificate” is a noun, and a “divorcement” is an adjective that describes the certificate. A man gives his wife a “certificate of divorce” (the noun and the adjective) and “sends her away” (the verb). To claim that a man can send his wife away without a certificate of divorce is simply not correct, again, because divorce does not end marriage; it merely allows a woman to live on her own -- where the temptation to latch onto another man is great (and men of weak constitution take the bait, and she should have returned to original husband). Only death ends marriage.
If men would simply keep their hands off divorced women, as men in this country knew they should as recently as 70 years ago, there would be no incentive for women to leave their husbands as they do today.
