Transcript for How Jesus Responded to the Divorce Debate

Hey Tim. Hi, John.

These words of Jesus about marriage and divorce and remarriage, they have had a huge, huge influence to say the least on the course of millions of people's lives over the last 2000 years. And there is a diversity of views on the implications of what Jesus is saying. There's a diversity of views of what he actually means. But then there's also a very pastoral and practical implications of all of this. But the bigger context is this is in the Sermon on the Mount and the part of the Sermon on the Mount where he's defining a greater righteousness. This is greater, higher calling of doing right by other people. And somehow there's something underneath this where Jesus is putting his finger on something where people are not doing right by each other and he wants to address that and give people God's wisdom on it.

It's from Deuteronomy, Chapter 24. And actually, Deuteronomy 24, which we'll look at in a moment, is fraught with interpretive challenges. Lucky yes. But then also, Jesus is going to repeat these words in another conversation later on in the same book of the Bible in Matthew. It's actually a longer story where you get more context and more explanation than makes things more clear. If we go look at that later story, it will bring clarity with what Jesus means and doesn't mean in this second year. So the stories in Matthew chapter 19, I'll just read the story. Some Pharisees came to Jesus in order to test him. And they asked, is it legal, and by legal they mean according to the Torah, not according to Roman law. Is it legitimate according to the covenant laws of the Torah? The man can send away his wife, which is Hebrew idiom for divorce. The man can send away his wife for any reason at all. This is a test.

And even more specifically, it's not just what's your view on divorce, what's your view about any reason divorce? This is a live debate happening in Jesus' day and among teachers of Torah and rabbis. So it's super important to register. First of all, the question is not even genuine.

Totally. This is what happens whenever a popular or famous figure gets up in a press conference. Yeah. And the god's requested. It's the loaded question. There's no way to win it. Because it's such a controversial issue that anything you say will automatically categorize you and divide the room and nobody else will hear what you're saying. Right. So Matthew saying that's the nature of this issue. They're asking him a question that's so controversial and loaded. Yeah. They're hoping to discredit his reputation.

Totally. Which means they're not asking him Jesus. What are your views on marriage and divorce? Yeah. It's a very specific question about a specific debate. Specifically, can it be for any reason? Correct. Any reason. And the reason they're bringing that up is because of the way Jewish Bible teachers were debating all these issues in relation to Deuteronomy chapter 24. So, I'll read it. This is my translation. 241. It says, if a man, so the law is even framed from a male's point of view, if a man takes a woman and marries her, and it comes about that she does not find favor in his eyes because he found in her some nakedness of a matter.

Nakedness of a matter. This is the phrase that the rabbis are all divided about how to interpret what it means. But it's the word nakedness. And then it's the word devar, which can mean word or thing.

They literal translation. Nakedness of the matter. Bring out the ambiguity of it. So let's say that he finds in her an air-bought devar nakedness of a matter. And so he must write for her a scroll of cutting off divorce papers divorce papers. So this is the phrase, nakedness of a thing.

Nope. So it appears only here a great dense ambiguous little phrase and was interpreted very different ways. Jesus is being drawn into a contemporary first century controversy among Jewish Bible teachers. You can go to contemporary Jewish sources or memories of this debate, because this debate was a big deal, and it's still registered in Jewish sources. So in the Talmud, which is a collection of Jewish writings and reflections based on the interpretation of the Torah, that preserve memories of the teachings rabbis from all over history, but in the first century. There's a memory that preserves that there were three positions of prominent rabbis in the first couple centuries. And we're just going to focus on two that we're at the center of this debate. The first position is represented by what's called the House of Shemai, which means a rabbi, Shemai, and then yet. He had like a school, a bunch of followers. So the House of Shemai says, a man should divorce his wife only because he finds grounds for unchastity. meaning adultery. Because it says in the Torah, and they quote from Deuteronomy 24, he has found in his wife something indecent, which he takes to mean adultery. The house of Hillel quotes the same verse from the Torah, and he thinks it's for any cause. Even if she spoiled his food, because Bible quote, he has found in her any indecent thing. So they take a very broad view. So all of this revolves around a fact. Of the 613 laws in the Torah that God gave to guide the people of Israel, only two of them have anything to say about divorce.

Yeah, and actually neither of them address it directly. It's indirectly. So that itself is actually a good example that the laws of the Torah don't represent the constitution of ancient Israel. This complete law code. Yeah, because if they were, you need thousands more laws to address really practical areas.

Yeah, so the house of Shemai, Rabbi Shemai says, it means that in the nakedness is referring to some matter where she was naked with another person. So it's time for adultery. Time for adultery. The house of Hillel says it means any matter of indecency, which is left up to the man's judgment. So the Pharisees are asking Jesus. So they're not saying, Jesus, are there any legitimate grounds for divorce? They're asking Jesus to give his view on Deuteronomy 24-1 because it's a controversial matter. And if they can categorize Jesus and they can divide his followers. So to me, there's a huge implication of this. Whatever Jesus' response is, this is not Jesus' complete teachings on marriage and divorce and remarriage. It's Jesus' response to a specific debate. So, let's just first name. This is all much of religious men. Having this conversation is as if women aren't in the room and they probably weren't in the room. name that and let's invite a woman into the room. I say we call up the New Testament scholar of his work I greatly admire on the Gospel of Matthew, Dr. Janine Brown. She's a professor of New Testament at Bethel University and she actually did her doctoral work on the Gospel of Matthew and she knows both this passage in Matthew 19 and the debates. around it from ancient times really well and also Janine serves on the NIV translation committee and actually the NIV makes a move in this passage that's really significant in how they translate these very verses that we're looking at and I want to get her to explain that to us.

Alright, Dr. Dineen Brown, thank you for joining us for this light conversation. How about Jesus' teachings on divorce and remarriage today?

I would love to hear how it is you ended up in New Testament studies and then specifically the Gospels and then specifically Matthew that you've done a number of published academic works on.

So just real quick explain the difference between a reduction approach to the gospels and then the narrative criticism approach. How do you talk about those two?

This is a great way to tie in to the topic. So there's two teachings about divorce and remarriage by Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, a really short condensed form in Matthew chapter five in the sermon on the Mount. And it's just very, it's like two verses in our modern Bibles. Do you want to read it?

But then what's interesting is that seems like a condensation of a much broader teaching of Jesus about divorce and remarriage in Matthew chapter 19. So to talk about one of these passages is kind of to talk about the other.

Walking in to Matthew 19 and this little saying on divorce and remarriage in the sermon on the mount, it really is like walking in to a conversation that two people have been having for a long time. We are literally waiting into a pretty complicated debate about a real practical matter in Jesus' time, divorce and remarriage. And while the story presents it as a matter of Jewish Bible scholars, engaging Jesus about interpretation, this is a high stakes question with high stakes implications, specifically for women. Right, absolutely. So another relevant factor, I want to get your take, that divorce was something, at least in Jewish culture, or Jewish subcultures that Jesus was in, could only be initiated by men. and not by women. I was curious what your take is on that view. If you think that's relevant for this, because if only men can initiate divorce, and for any reason, we have the makings of a really, really destructive environment, or at least an environment that can leave women unempowered and really vulnerable to men who want to dispose of their wives.

You know, it makes me think in a narrative context this time from the Gospel of John, the way the different readers through history have perceived Jesus's engagement with the Samaritan woman at the well. And when he names that she's had many husbands, and then the one she's living now with is not her husband. You know, many people, I think in our modern context, it would be easy to hear that and think of her as promiscuous. More likely reality in that first century context is more like the throw away.

I think that helps us gain perspective also on what Jesus says next. Jesus turns his attention instead of to the divorce law in Deuteronomy 24. It's like you redirects the focus of the conversation and he goes to pages one and two of Genesis and he quotes from the seven day creation story. Have it you read the one who created them from the beginning made the male and female.

The Nichols from the Garden of Eden story about the one human who became to who were then to become one again in marriage, and then the famous line, you know, what God has joined together, let no human separate. For Jesus, marriage is one way, a very powerful way, that humans image God. And for Jesus, that's clearly like the foundation point, from any thinking you have about ending that oneness or separating those two. So, this is fascinating. Jesus appeals to one part of the Torah, Genesis, as kind of leverage over against an abusive interpretation of a later part of the Torah in 1924.

And that protects the ideal. I like the way you sit that chinion. There's like a prototype that you call an ideal and then the proviso or like the concession. There's an obsession with the concession about the rules, and it's sort of like, Jesus is just saying, what, why are we, how do we lose focus here? Here's the ideal. But that raises the interesting question, then should we view Jesus' teachings as the comprehensive definition, or as one key scriptural text that should be set along side many others because he doesn't elaborate very much outside of this one particular debate in the zoo were just noting both you and John that real life and real marriage and divorce is way more complicated and so it may not always boil down to adultery but there are lots of other reasons that covenant faithfulness can be violated How should we take GSA's teachings as comprehensive or more focused in particular?

But in our modern context, we're in such a different context in some ways than Jesus was when you had this debate, right? So we're now many generations in to pretty significant legal revolutions in Western history when it comes to marriage and divorce law. And so that began even before I was a kid, before I was born in the 60s and 70s, at least here in North America. And so now divorce for many different kinds of reasons, some big, some small is just kind of normal. It's like really normalized in our culture in a way that's different. I think in the past. So in one sense, people appealing to Jesus' emphasis here is really important. that probably our default in a modern context should be covenant loyalty should probably last longer than what feels reasonable to me, just given our culture's default. But then you need to flip that so quickly, don't you? And you need to say, but also there is room and actually necessity for nuance here, because there might be cases that don't involve adultery, but where a covenant Bond really has been violated, but through some other circumstance that Jesus just didn't happen to name, because that's not the debate they were having. Yes. And so there needs to be more flexibility in wisdom, but also more covenant faithfulness. There's attention there. There's attention. And there was attention in Jesus' time, clearly. That debate is sparked. And there's attention in our time, too, but I think for a different set of reasons that can help us read this teaching, with new power to hear power in it, but in maybe in a way that's different.

I can recall really vividly when the importance of this two sides of this wisdom became clear to me. It was then a pastoral context when in the teaching series we were doing, you know, was through Matthew. I remember meeting a woman who I spoke with In that season, who had to leave a marriage and her previous church because her husband was physically and verbally abusive to her and her children. But the church leaders, at least she was processing, didn't believe that it was legitimate because there hadn't been sexual unfaithfulness. And so I'll never forget learning more about her story. And it just struck me in a real personal way, how powerful and significant the implications. are of how we take Jesus' teachings in this context and that there is just that balance. It would be easier if Jesus had just given us the definitive rulebook. But then it just wouldn't address the complexities of actual life. And I suppose actual life is where we live, not in a theoretical environment.

Yes. So what's wonderful is that you have served on the NIV, in your international version, translation committee. And so the way that the NIV renders What Jesus says in Matthew chapter 5 verse 32, I found really helpful, but it's different than a number of modern English translations, and it is where Jesus says, and I say to you that everyone who sends away his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, and then hears the line, he makes her a victim of adultery. Whereas in other English translations, it's something to the effect of, he makes her commit adultery. And that difference between, he makes her a victim of adultery or he makes her commit adultery. That's a significant difference. And I think I understand why the NIV made the decision that it does. But I just would love to hear you explain what you think the difference is. And this is wonderful because we're going from a big picture about creation and the ideals and wisdom about marriage. And now we're to the interpretation of one verb. For example, words, you know a couple words in Greek. But this to me actually is really significant for understanding the bigger picture of what Jesus is saying.

You know what? Would you say, you know, if there's someone listening who has gone through maybe or is going through a really tough time in their marriage or is in a divorce and they're trying to hear the wisdom of Jesus and navigate a complex situation, what would you encourage them to hear and maybe to not hear from what Jesus is saying here?

Well said, thank you for that, Mr. Jeanine, and thank you for taking time to talk to us.

We've got to learn a little bit about Israelite, oath swearing, to make sense about Jesus and saying here. This is a good example of wisdom literature that issue underneath this actually is really powerful.