Week 61, Day 5: Concerning Divorce

Today’s Reading:  Deut 24:1-22

Some thoughts from today’s reading…

We have had a long listing of various laws given to Israel over the last few chapters.  Chapter 24 begins by speaking about an abomination before the Lord.  The abomination would be for a man to divorce his wife because he found some unseemly thing in her and then later he takes her back to be his wife after she has been married to another man.  Moses gives two possibly reasons for why she did not remain married to the second husband.  The first possiblity is that he divorced her because he “turns against her” and the other reason mentioned is if the man died.  Whatever the cause for the second marriage ending, we are told that it is an abomination before God for the first husband to take the woman as his wife again.  These kind of passages are intriguing because they beg the question, why?  Why would this be an abomination.  We are not told and thus are left to simply accept that the mind of God was revealed to Israel regarding what actions were not acceptable behavior. 

The other thing to note from this passage is how different are the terms for getting a divorce.  Here, the wife finds no favor in the man’s eyes, he finds something that displeases him about her.  So he just sends her off with a certificate of divorce.  Under the law of Moses divorce was very easy for a man to do and could be based on very little other than she displeases him.  We are told by Jesus that from the beginning of time this was not how God designed for things to be done, but that God permitted such actions for a period of time (Matt 19:3-12).  God always intended marriage to be for life (“What therefore God has joined together let no man separate”) and the only time divorce & remarriage would not result in committing adultery was if the man divorces his wife because of her fornication.

Question:  Why do so many people today prefer or want to act like divorce should be as easy as under the law of Moses (pay close attention to why Jesus said Moses permitted them to divorce their wives in Matt 19:8)?

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