(This is a second excerpt from chapter 17 of my manuscript on the Sermon on the Mount; the first excerpt is here.)
That the Pharisees confronting Jesus [in Matthew 19] don’t believe divorce to be sinful is clear from their belief that Moses commanded divorce. Jesus shows them how far wrong they have gone, and how hard their hearts have become, by linking divorce to adultery. He does the same in the Sermon on the Mount, and it’s instructive to put the two statements together. Matthew 19:9 is straightforward: “Anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery.”[1] The man is the guilty party from start to finish. If he divorces his wife unjustly, God will not grant his divorce. Any remarriage on his part is adulterous because it defies the will and purpose of God in creating marriage in the first place. God will not simply accede to our pretensions to set his work aside for our own selfish purposes.
Jesus’ assertion in Matthew 5 is less obvious: “Everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”[2] Many scholars assume Jesus is forbidding men to marry divorced women.[3] If we look carefully at the grammar of 5:32, however, I think we can see a different interpretation hidden behind the individualistic assumptions of Western culture. Jesus does not say a divorced woman who remarries is guilty of adultery, he says the man who divorced her makes her commit adultery. Whether his statement assumes her remarriage or not,[4] the guilt for adultery is pointedly placed not on her but on her ex-husband.
There is good reason to think the same is true of the statement which follows. The last word of 5:32 in the Greek is μοιχᾶται, which is a participial form of the verb meaning “to commit adultery.” The key point about μοιχᾶται is that it’s a passive form, not active.[5] If we take that seriously, the change in our translation is significant: “Whoever marries a divorced woman is made to commit adultery.” Made by whom? By her ex-husband. Jesus isn’t saying it’s a sin to marry a divorced woman any more than he’s saying it’s a sin to be dumped by your husband for no good reason. He’s saying if a man divorces his wife simply because he wants to, his guilt extends to everything that follows from that divorce.
R. C. H. Lenski argues this point strongly.
Dictionaries, commentaries, and translators regard μοιχευθῆναι and also μοιχᾶται as active, and they do this in the face of v. 27, 28 where we have the actives. . . . No attempt is made to prove that the passive forms of this verb have the same sense as the active. . . .
We have no passive corresponding to the active “to commit adultery.” But this is no justification for translating these two passives as though they were actives like the actives in v. 27, 28. Since our English fails us here, we must express the two passive forms as best we can to bring out the passive sense of the Greek forms. . . .
This man as little “commits adultery” as the woman “commits adultery.” Neither “commits” anything, both have had something committed upon them.[6]
If we read Jesus in Matthew 5:32 (or 19:9) as apportioning blame or punishing women, we’ve misunderstood him from start to finish. For that matter, if we try to parse his words for a list of approved reasons for divorce, we’ve repeated the error of the Pharisees. Lenski says wisely, “Neither Jesus nor Paul [in 1 Corinthians 7:15] is stating causes for divorce; neither is legislating or speaking of legal steps. Both are dealing with the sinful acts which disrupt a marriage in violation of the divine commandment.”[7] To that end, Jesus makes it clear to his disciples, the Pharisees, and the crowds that what they have come to take lightly is in fact grave sin. Their sense of their own sin, and thus their Law, is far too small. They have grown comfortable and familiar with moral horror, and part of his purpose is to re-horrify them. He seeks to capture their imagination with the darkness of their sin so they can truly see the light of God’s grace. This is the purpose of the blood-curdling imagery in 5:29-30.
Photo © 2009 Pascal. Public domain.
[1] Matthew 19:9 (NIV)
[2] Matthew 5:32 (ESV).
[3] Keener, Matthew, 192 treats the last clause of 5:32 as hyperbole. Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:532 conclude that “its purpose was [probably] not to lay down the law but to reassert an ideal and make divorce a sin, thereby disturbing then current complacency,” then assert that if this is so, Matthew misunderstood Jesus. Luz, Matthew 1-7, 252 calls Jesus’ words “out of touch with reality” and declares, “Jesus is thinking of God’s pure, unconditional will—that is, in terms of marriage—rather than in terms of love for the disadvantaged woman.”
[4] Scholars generally assume Jesus is making this assumption, but I believe their assumption is unwarranted. See Blomberg, Matthew, 111, and R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Matthew’s Gospel 1-14 (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2008), 232.
[5] Properly speaking, it’s in the middle/passive voice. However, the middle would make little sense here; that would translate as “causes himself to commit adultery,” which would be no different from the active voice in meaning but much clumsier.
[6] Lenski, Interpretation, 232-35.
[7] Ibid., 234.