Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Mark 10

Jesus was moving closer and closer to the ancient city of Jerusalem where the final acts of the redemptive drama were to take place. He set his face to the accomplishment of his divine mission. Since 9:30 Jesus had been directing his teaching ministry toward his disciples, but now again he was among the crowds and teaching them.

The question posed by the Pharisees was not a sincere one. They were testing him, trying to catch him in some statement about a subject on which they themselves had no agreement, and then to use it against him. Jesus was in Herod Antipas’s territory, the ruler who had put John the Baptist to death because John had denounced Antipas’s marriage to Herodias. Perhaps the Pharisees hoped that Jesus, by his statements on marriage and divorce, would get himself into trouble with Antipas and would suffer the same cruel fate as John.

On the question of the lawfulness of divorce, there was general unanimity among the Jews: divorce was allowed. The real difference of opinion centered in the grounds for divorce as cited in Dt. 24:1. The crucial words are “something indecent” (GK 6872). What did that include? The school of Shammai, the stricter of the schools, understood these words to mean something morally indecent, in particular, adultery. The school of Hillel interpreted the words much more freely. Just about anything in a wife that a husband did not find to his liking was suitable grounds for divorce—even if she burned his food! So where did Jesus stand in this? That was their question.

Jesus, as he often did when in controversy with the Jewish religious leaders, countered with a question of his own. Moses was their authority—what did he say? Jesus knew they would appeal to Moses. They admitted that a man could divorce his wife, but only after giving her a certificate of divorce, making the transaction permanent and legal.

Jesus, as he often did when in controversy with the Jewish religious leaders, countered with a question of his own. Moses was their authority—what did he say? Jesus knew they would appeal to Moses. They admitted that a man could divorce his wife, but only after giving her a certificate of divorce, making the transaction permanent and legal.

Jesus did not question the law. But his answer reaches back to first principles. Moses’ permission to divorce was an accommodation to human weakness. It was an attempt to bring some sort of order in a society that disregarded God’s standards. But that is not what God intended in marriage. His original design in creating man and woman was that marriage should be an unbroken lifelong union (Genesis 2:18–24). Marriage was not a temporary convenience that could be terminated at will.