DiscipleOfChrist
Member
I'll add a couple more points:
Jeremiah 3:1 They say, ‘If a man divorces his wife, And she goes from him And becomes another man’s, May he return to her again?’ Would not that land be greatly polluted? But you have played the harlot with many lovers; Yet return to Me,” says the LORD.
The first sentence isn't the full law repeated, but the relevant part: she became another man's.
A woman who "played the whore with many lovers" and tries to return to her husband is unfathomable under Israel's law (the law commands that she's long-since dead), but the issue is the same which is why God compares the two: the abomination of a defiled wife returning to her husband.
As we can see from the comparison, Israel would be expected to know what the two scenarios had in common as relevant to the point.
As mentioned, the full Jeremiah 3 (and the whole analogy of Hosea and Gomer) is to renounce the adulteries and THEN return -- not the latter before the former.
This is why Joseph was "afraid" to take Mary: not just put off or disgusted, but truly afraid. He was considered a "just man" for not wanting to join to a woman who he thought was defiled.
And it is not grammatically possible to say that Joseph was a "just man" and THEREFORE wanted to put her away quietly; the conjunction is "and," to put ideas together, but implicitly excludes direct causation.
Jeremiah 3:1 They say, ‘If a man divorces his wife, And she goes from him And becomes another man’s, May he return to her again?’ Would not that land be greatly polluted? But you have played the harlot with many lovers; Yet return to Me,” says the LORD.
The first sentence isn't the full law repeated, but the relevant part: she became another man's.
A woman who "played the whore with many lovers" and tries to return to her husband is unfathomable under Israel's law (the law commands that she's long-since dead), but the issue is the same which is why God compares the two: the abomination of a defiled wife returning to her husband.
As we can see from the comparison, Israel would be expected to know what the two scenarios had in common as relevant to the point.
As mentioned, the full Jeremiah 3 (and the whole analogy of Hosea and Gomer) is to renounce the adulteries and THEN return -- not the latter before the former.
This is why Joseph was "afraid" to take Mary: not just put off or disgusted, but truly afraid. He was considered a "just man" for not wanting to join to a woman who he thought was defiled.
And it is not grammatically possible to say that Joseph was a "just man" and THEREFORE wanted to put her away quietly; the conjunction is "and," to put ideas together, but implicitly excludes direct causation.
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