Biblion Bible Commentary
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What God Has Joined Together
Matthew 19:1-12
1 When Jesus had finished these words, he departed from Galilee and came into the borders of Judea beyond the Jordan. · WEB
Asked to take a side in a divorce debate, he goes back past Moses to the garden — and his disciples are appalled.
When Jesus had finished these words, he departed from Galilee and came into the borders of Judea beyond the Jordan Matthew 19:1.
The fourth discourse ends and the Galilean ministry ends with it. From here the road runs toward Jerusalem.
"Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason?" Matthew 19:3. The question is a trap and it is also a live dispute; the schools of the day divided over how wide the grounds in the law ran Deuteronomy 24:1, and any answer would make enemies. He is also standing in the territory of the king who imprisoned John over a marriage.
The exchange is in the earlier account Mark 10:1–31. What is worth marking is that he does not answer the question asked. He answers an earlier one.
"Haven't you read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female?" Matthew 19:4 Genesis 1:27 Genesis 2:24. The appeal goes behind the law of Moses to the creation, and it treats those two chapters as the standing definition rather than as an origin story. Three things are taken from them: that the pairing is male and female, that a man leaves his parents to form a new household, and that the result is one flesh — a single thing, not a contract between two.
"What therefore God has joined together, don't let man tear apart" Matthew 19:6. The joining is God's act and the tearing is a human one, which reframes the whole debate. The Pharisees were asking what grounds release a man. He is saying the question begins in the wrong place, because a marriage is not the sort of thing whose dissolution is a matter of finding sufficient cause.
"Why then did Moses command us to give her a certificate of divorce?" Matthew 19:7. The objection is fair and the answer is careful. "Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it has not been so" Matthew 19:8. Not commanded — allowed. The certificate was a protection for a woman being put out, in a world where she had none, and a concession to hardness is not a statement of the will of God.
"Whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery" Matthew 19:9. The exception is carried twice in this Gospel and by no other Matthew 5:32, and honest readers have long differed over how far it reaches. What can be said plainly is that it exists, that it is narrow, and that it is stated as an exception to a rule rather than as a doorway back to the debate he had just refused. Nothing here is addressed to the person already carrying that history; the audience is men looking for the grounds to leave.
"If this is the case of the man with his wife, it is not expedient to marry" Matthew 19:10. The disciples' reaction is the honest measure of how far the standard exceeded the practice of their time. If there is no exit, they say, do not go in.
"Not all men can receive this saying, but those to whom it is given" Matthew 19:11. The reply takes their remark seriously instead of dismissing it. There is a life without marriage, and the third of the three cases is the only one chosen — eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake Matthew 19:12, which is the language of renunciation rather than of surgery, as the other two cases in the list make clear by contrast.
"He who is able to receive it, let him receive it." It is offered and not imposed, which is the same footing the whole passage stands on.
held with reason What this mark means