Can a Woman Get Divorced?

We're going to start with Mark 10.

In verse 2, we have the Pharisees coming to test Jesus. 

They ask him if it is lawful to divorce.

Remember, they are trying to find a way to trap Him, not learn from Him.

He does a little of what we might call Socratic method. What does Mose (their Bible) say?

Moses suffers them (their ancestors, really) to write a bill of divorcement (v. 4).

What is this bill of divorcement?

In their world, because there are not a lot of the conveniences of civilization such as welfare states and hospitals and police and county governments and such, women and children needed protection, and men were assigned by tradition -- and compelled by the forces of nature -- to provide protection. This is a stewardship arrangement, which transmitted to the previous centuries of our civilization as chattelry.

Women and children became chattel of the husband/father -- of their male protector. And men became arbitrary despots -- sometimes benevolent despots, but most of near pre-modern tradition puts men in the role of despot.

Divorce in our world is regulated by the government. If a divorced woman has a hard time making ends meet, there are safety nets, at least there are some safety nets. Whether they are sufficient or not is argued but they are there.

In the Old Testament world, such safety nets were unthinkable. No such governments to provide/enforce them.

If a woman were put out by her husband/lord, she would need proof that she was free before she could find another lord/husband. That is what the bill of divorcement was, and it was all she would have to keep her from death or prostitution.

So it was not to free the man to get another woman. From the law of Moses discussing the wives of man's dead brother, we know that a man could marry another woman. 

The bill of divorcement was to allow the woman to find another protector/benefactor. 

Divorce in our world, until recently, was to free the man.

Divorce in their world was to free the woman and give her a fighting chance to survive. 

Becomes men's hearts are often hard, per verse 5. 

Then Jesus talks brings Adam and Eve into the discussion by inference.

They twain shall be one flesh (v. 8). What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.

How does God join them together? 

We get a hint from Matthew 5: 28. But does a women who lusts after a man she is not married to not (necessarily) commit adultery in her heart, as well?

What is good for the gander is good for the goose, is not scripture, but we can understand that it applies. Women can also commit adultery in their hearts, if they lust after that to which they are not joined to.

What God has joined together: sex is tantamount to marriage. Law only gives official recognition to what has already occurred -- or to what the couple assert will occur.

To adulterate something is to weaken it by admixing with something that should not be there. 

Adultery is the same, specific to sex.

This is how the husband who divorces his wife causes her to commit adultery. 

In Matthew 19, we have this discussion of adultery repeated. But fornication is given as a reason for the man to be allowed to give his wife a bill of divorcement. Why is that so?  

It is often interpreted that the fornication is on the part of the woman, but Matthew 19 does not say that. 

Let's look back at Mark 10.

Toward the end of the chapter, the Sons of Thunder ask to be allowed to sit on Jesus' left and right, and Jesus uses this opportunity to teach all the Twelve about righteous rule.

The Son of Man came not to be ministered to, but to minister. The chief shall be the servant of all.

Jesus often compares himself to the bridegroom, and the Church to the bride.

 In 1st Corinthians 11, Paul talks about some of the traditions of the Corinthians, showing them how the Gospel can be applied to their traditions. (But if any be contentious, we have no such traditions, v. 16.)

And he says, neither is the man without the woman, nor the woman without the man (v. 11), invoking Adam and Eve. 

How can the man commit adultery?

Remember Matthew 5: 28? I have mentioned it. 

Lusts. Go read Hosea.

A man commits adultery by giving his woman's rights of protection to someone else. In this case, it is only right that the woman be allowed to seek a bill of divorcement.

If we understand protection, a man who abuses a woman is taking her rights of protection away, and is this also committing adultery by means of abuse, even when another women is not involved.

Abuse is abdication of the covenant of marriage. 

Fornications , whether on the part of the woman or the man, do make the innocent partner free of the covenant, and allow the innocent partner to seek another partner without the burden of the sin of adultery. 

Abuse is a kind of fornication.

I'll note that the bill of divorce is not automatic. The innocent party can forgive the guilty party, if the guilty party is willing to be forgiven, and if the Holy Spirit of God directs them so. But that's a topic for another day.

I can make a more compelling case for the above, but it is not compatible with the principles of the Gospel to compel the hearts of the children of men. 

 

 

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