Biblion Bible Commentary
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A Certificate of Divorce
Matthew 5:31-32
31 “It was also said, ‘Whoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorce,’ · WEB
Two verses that turn a permission into a protection — with the fuller argument reserved for the day the Pharisees come to test him on it.
"It was also said, 'Whoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorce'" Matthew 5:31.
The provision quoted is from Deuteronomy Deuteronomy 24:1–4, and its purpose there was protective: a dismissed woman needed documentary proof that she was free, or she had no standing and no future. In the teaching of the day it had been turned into the opposite — a procedure that made dismissal legitimate provided the paperwork was correct.
"But I tell you that whoever puts away his wife, except for the cause of sexual immorality, makes her an adulteress; and whoever marries her when she is put away commits adultery" Matthew 5:32.
The correction reads the permission as a restraint rather than a licence, and the phrase makes her an adulteress keeps the consequence where the law had put it — on the woman, who bears the outcome of a decision she did not make. A man who dismisses his wife for a trivial cause has not merely ended a marriage; he has forced her into a position she must then live in.
The exception is stated plainly and it is the reason this Gospel is where the question gets argued. Unfaithfulness has already broken what the certificate would merely be recording.
That is as far as the sermon takes it. The full case — what God joined at the beginning, why Moses permitted what he permitted, what the disciples made of the answer — belongs to the day the Pharisees come with the question deliberately, to test him Matthew 19:3–9, and it is argued there.
What this paragraph contributes is the pattern of the other five. A rule that had been read as defining the permissible minimum is read instead as protecting a person, and the man holding the certificate is told that his compliance does not settle the matter.
held with reason What this mark means