Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Mark 10:2

"And there came unto him Pharisees, and asked him, Is it lawful for a man to put away [his] wife? trying him." — Mark 10:2 (ASV)

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.