Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 19:3

"And there came unto him Pharisees, trying him, and saying, Is it lawful [for a man] to put away his wife for every cause?" — Matthew 19:3 (ASV)

Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason? (See the note on Matthew 5:32). The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, to the extent it was known, had already provided a clear answer to the Pharisees' question.

However, it is quite conceivable that this teaching had not reached them. If it had, they may have wished to test His consistency, wanting to see if He still sided with the stricter school of Shammai rather than the more lenient school of Hillel. The incident with the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1–11), if it is correctly placed in the timeline, might also have given rise to doubts and rumors. Would the one who dealt so mercifully with the adulteress sanction divorce even in that case, or would He declare the marriage bond absolutely unbreakable? Or did His apparent tolerance for her indicate a lower standard for marital obligations? In any case, they might hope to bring Him into conflict with either the stricter or the more popular school of legal experts.

As an illustration of the cultural context, the Jewish historian Josephus records divorcing two of his own wives for relatively trivial reasons (Life, sections 75-76). In his history, he also speaks of “many causes of all kinds” as justifying separation (Antiquities 4.8.23). We do not know on what grounds Herod Antipas had divorced the daughter of Aretas, but it is quite probable that here, as in other instances, the Herodian party was working with the Pharisees.

Here in Perea, they likely hoped that the Teacher would either shrink from stating His convictions or express them in a way that would provoke the tetrarch’s wrath, just as John the Baptist had done. In either case, they would have gained an advantage against Him.