Page 507 … Re-membering Matthew 19
This particular passage has Jesus making the following statement: “Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning made them male and female?.… For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” (from Matthew 19:4-5; citing Genesis 2:23-24) … Well, it is true that a conservatively literal interpretation of these verses could be construed to have Jesus saying that only heterosexual unions between one man & one woman are sanctified, and yet when we look at the greater context of the passage we can see that this is clearly not what he is doing here. Consider the implications of the following two facts:
Fact #01) Even though polygamy was indeed becoming less & less acceptable during the Second Temple Period (the final years thereof being when this passage in Matthew 19 was uttered), it was still an officially accepted form of marriage at this time. Paul himself verified this fact in 1 Corinthians 7:32-35, when he noted that men with more than one wife shouldn’t serve in the church leadership (presumably out of concern that a man with multiple wives wouldn’t have the time to properly care for both his church and his larger family).
Fact #02) During the time of Jesus’ ministry there existed quite the strident conflict between two major factions of Judaism, and part of this conflict concerned the theme of divorce – specifically how & when a married couple could become legally separated in the eyes of the Lord. The leader the first group, Rabbi Shammai, taught that the Hebrew word “displeasing” in Deuteronomy 24:1 meant that only a very serious transgression (like adultery), could allow a couple to legally separate (making divorce extremely difficult to effectuate) … The leader of the opposing faction, Rabbi Hillel, taught that almost anything would satisfy this verse (making a divorce extremely easy to obtain). As such, when we keep this fact in mind and re-read the text in question, we see that Jesus is not commenting on marriage at all, but is rather talking about divorce – publicly supporting the far more conservative interpretation of Deuteronomy 24:1 offered by Rabbi Shammai, and rejecting the more lenient interpretation thereof proposed by Rabbi Hillel. In essence, then, the question being posed to Jesus in Matthew 19 is not “What is an acceptable marriage”, but rather “When is it acceptable to divorce?” … Consider:
“Some Pharisees came to [Jesus], and to test him they asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason?’ And he answered, ‘Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning made them male and female?’ and he said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.’ And then they asked him, ‘Why then did Moses command us to give a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her?’ And he answered them, ‘It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife … and marries another, commits adultery.” ~ Matthew 19:3-9
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