Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Matthew 19:7

"They say unto him, Why then did Moses command to give a bill of divorcement, and to put [her] away?" — Matthew 19:7 (ASV)

The Pharisees refer to Dt 24:1–4, which they interpret to mean something like this: “If a man takes a wife... and she does not find favor in his eyes... he shall write a bill of divorce... and shall send her away from his house.” But the Hebrew more naturally means something like this: “If a man takes a wife... and she does not find favor in his eyes... and he writes a bill of divorce... and he sends her away from his house... and her second husband does the same thing, then her first husband must not marry her again.” In other words, Moses did not command divorce but permitted it, and the text is less concerned with explaining the nature of that indecency than with prohibiting remarriage of the twice- divorced woman to her first husband. Divorce and remarriage are therefore presupposed by Moses: i.e., he “permitted” them (v.8).

Jesus goes on to say that Moses’ concession reflected not the true creation ordinance but the hardness of human hearts. Divorce is not part of the Creator’s perfect design. If Moses permitted it, he did so because sin can be so vile that divorce is to be preferred to continued “indecency.” This is not to say that the person who, according to what Moses said, divorced his spouse was actually committing sin in so doing; rather, that divorce could even be considered testified that there was already sin in the marriage. Therefore any view of divorce and remarriage (taught in either OT or NT) that sees the problem only in terms of what may or may not be done has already overlooked a basic fact— divorce is never to be thought of as a God-ordained, morally neutral option but as evidence of sin, of hardness of heart.