Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Matthew 5:32

"but I say unto you, that every one that putteth away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, maketh her an adulteress: and whosoever shall marry her when she is put away committeth adultery." — Matthew 5:32 (ASV)

This two-verse unit carries further the argument of the preceding section. The OT not only points toward insisting that lust is the moral equivalent of adultery (vv.27–30) but that divorce is as well. This arises out of the fact that the divorced woman will in most circumstances remarry (esp. in first-century Palestine, where this would probably be her only means of support). That new marriage, whether from the perspective of the divorcee or the one marrying her, is adulterous.

The OT passage to which Jesus refers is Dt. 24:1–4, whose thrust is that if a man divorces his wife because of “something indecent” (not further defined) in her, he must give her a certificate of divorce; and if she then becomes another man’s wife and is divorced again, the first man cannot remarry her. This double restriction in the OT—the certificate and the prohibition of remarriage— discouraged hasty divorces. Here Jesus does not go into the force of “something indecent.” Instead he insists that the law was pointing to the sanctity of marriage.

The natural way to take the “except” clause is that divorce is wrong because it generates adultery except in the case of fornication. In that case, where sexual sin has already been committed, nothing is laid down, though it appears that divorce is then implicitly permitted, even if not mandated (cf. further discussion at 19:3–12).