If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house … - Deuteronomy 24:1

Today’s Scripture Reading (November 10, 2015): Deuteronomy 24

Divorce has become easy. I am convinced that if we enter into marriage with the idea that we can divorce if things don’t work out, then divorce becomes a probability. Because marriage is hard – it always has been. Marriage means that we are willing to work at that relationship to the exclusion of others. If we don’t work at the relationship harder than we work at other relationships in our lives, then divorce is the only outcome that we can expect.

But divorce in some cultures has been even easier than it is in ours. In Middle Eastern cultures, divorce was often simply a matter of the man saying “I divorce you” three times. If that was done, then the woman was cast out and the divorce was official. And it would seem that this is the issue to which this command is speaking. The man must give a certificate. Something as important as marriage and divorce must not be left up to the words that we say in the heat of the moment – the process must be slowed down and a certificate must be given.

But Hebrew scholars have also argued that this passage speaks about the grounds necessary for divorce – and the grounds are found in the words “because he finds something indecent about her.” In the half century before Jesus, there lived two giants of Jewish thought, Hillel the Elder and Shammai. The two men seemed to argue about everything. Hillel the Elder was a little looser in the way that he interpreted the Scripture, and Shammai was more restrictive. Hillel was more Liberal and Shammai was more Conservative. Both took the Hebrew Scripture very seriously. It is interesting that Shammai, the stricter one, was also known to be very kind and nice.

So it is maybe not a surprise that the two men differed over their interpretation of Deuteronomy 24:1. And their focus was over the phrase “something indecent about her.” The actual translation of the words here seems to be a “nakedness of a thing.” Shammai based his argument on the word “nakedness” and Hillel on the phrase “of a thing.” So for Shammai, the real issue was nakedness and indecency, which he interpreted to mean unfaithfulness. Shammai argued that the only grounds for a godly divorce was found in an unfaithfulness of one party to the marriage bed. Adultery was the only grounds for divorce. Hillel, not surprisingly, disagreed with Shammai and he based his argument on the phrase “of a thing.” Hillel argued that if the wife failed in any aspect of married life, she had been found lacking ‘in a thing” or “naked in a thing” and could be divorced. Basically, if she burns the toast then she has been lacking of a thing and could now be divorced. (Some of our own logic for leaving a marriage often seems to be based on Hillel’s idea of the grounds for divorce.)

When Jesus wandered into the issue of adultery and divorce in the Sermon on the Mount, it was quite likely that the question on the minds of most of those who had come to listen was on which side of the argument Jesus was going to fall. They may have even had an idea, because the reality was that Jesus sided with Hillel the elder on almost every scriptural issue. But on this issue, Jesus sided with Shammai. Divorce was something that needed to be considered only in the most drastic of circumstances. Infidelity and abuse were reasons to leave the marriage, but otherwise the participants needed to take divorce off of the table – and work at the relationship into which they had chosen to enter.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Deuteronomy 25