Cleaning Up the Mosaic Law?

And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together let not man separate.” They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another… commits adultery: and he that marries her when she is put away also commits adultery” Mt 19:3-9.

I was thinking about these verses the other day and wondered to myself if Jesus was teaching new law for the sake of Christians or just cleaning up the Mosaic Law for the people living under it in that day and age. I’m really not sure which. Certainly he says Moses allowing them a “certificate of divorcement” was taken away.

So I decided to take a look at these verses only through the lens of the Mosaic Law.

“I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another… commits adultery”

Why was the exception given for a man to remarry if his wife committed adultery? My guess is because under the Mosaic Law she would be punished for that sin (adultery) with the death penalty. Since she is “dead” the man is free to remarry. Even if the penalty was unlawfully not applied she was still under the sentence of death under the Law of Moses.

In addition, the husband who divorces his wife (except if she is guilty of adultery) and marries another is committing adultery. Why? Because Jesus does not allow a “certificate of Divorce” and the man is still lawfully bound to his original wife. He risks the Mosaic death penalty.

What about the situation if a wife is divorced for a reason other than adultery and remarries?

She cannot remarry because she is still legally bound to her first husband and therefore not eligible to remarry and if she does remarry she makes her new so-called husband an adulterer… and they are both eligible for the death penalty under the provisions of the Law of Moses.

Of course Jesus may not just be cleaning up the Law of Moses he may in fact be instituting new law and so we have to be very careful about the modern application of these verses. I’m continuing to think about these things and hope you are too. There are certainly other verses that need to be considered as well.