Nathan E. Lewis

“The Covenant: Divorce” Deuteronomy 24:1-4

The prevailing view today is that divorce is on the rise, and that in our lifetime the institution of the family has been assaulted like never before in human history. While I do believe that the institution of marriage and family is presently in trouble, allow me to paint a slightly different historical assessment: The institutions of marriage and family have been in deep trouble from the very beginning of time. Some of us cringe at the no-fault laws in Oregon. But in the great Egyptian Empire in Moses’ day, the laws allowed a husband to divorce his wife on account of her bad breath. If the choices are no-fault laws or the citing of petty imperfections, I’ll choose no-fault. The first century laws of the Roman Empire presented marriage as the intent of two people to live together. Divorce was simply a declaration of the husband’s desire to no longer live with his wife. This declaration need not occur in a court of law, but before any seven witnesses. Therefore, divorce was common practice.
In the 16th Century the Council of Trent summarized the Church’s oversight of marriages as early as the 2nd century. The Council then insisted upon a priest presiding over the marriage ceremony and his publishing of records in the parish of both bride and groom. This Council was the first in Church history to ban divorce, calling it and all sorts of grounds for it anathema. Divorce must have been a common part of Medieval life. Marriages and families must have been in crisis back in the good ol’ days of knights, ladies, lords, and kings. Remember Camelot?
Also in the 16th Century, John Calvin’s Geneva transformed the Western concept of sex, marriage, and family life. Calvin made marriage and divorce, children’s welfare matters of both the Church and the State. Calvin’s Geneva was the beginning of the State’s involvement in domestic life. 16th Century Geneva, Switzerland was an amazing place, the cutting edge of social history – home to the first public colleges and hospitals. It was also home to a City Council that crafted hundreds of civic laws. And so, we live in a world in which every institution seeks to help us when our marriages go sour. Our families get involved, the Church factors in, and the State hauls us into court. This is our particular social context, our grid through which we view and interpret the ancient laws recorded by Moses.
Moses led Israel out of Egypt, a society quite similar to our present civilization. God redeemed his people from more than one kind of bondage. In the wilderness, God gave to his people laws to protect and to expand their freedom. Moses delivered these addresses compiled in Deuteronomy to prepare Israel to return to civilization, to the highly developed cities of Canaan. These Fertile Crescent nations were a bit twisted, especially when it came to family matters. The Canaanite treated a woman as if she were a piece of farmland or a beast of burden. God gives to Moses these divorce laws in Deuteronomy 24: 1-4 to protect Israel from the oppressive practices of Egypt, Canaan, Moab, and other surrounding nations. These people groups allowed husbands to divorce their wives for no reason at all, with no legal record and no obligation to care for the wife and the children.
This is the reason for Moses’ opening clauses, “When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her….� This was the common practice surrounding Israel. A Canaanite man wakes up in the morning, tethers his cow, sells her at market, returns to his farm to harvest his grain, drops by the tent to eat his mid-day meal, disapproves of his wife’s cooking and rashly divorces her with a verbal dismissal. Ho hum, another day in the life of a Canaanite man, all in a day’s work. Moses makes divorce a written, legal action for the protection of the woman. This is groundbreaking. Moses makes divorce a matter of civic law. Remember, Moses is a key catalyst in changing his culture from an oral tradition to a written tradition. By requiring a written certificate, the divorce and its grounds is a matter of public record. Everyone in the community will know if the man divorced his wife because of her bad breath, or poor cooking skills. He must supply his wife with the certificate. It is in her possession so that she has proof of the divorce and its grounds. It protects her from rumors of adultery. Such rumors could prevent her from remarriage not to mention family and friends shunning her rendering her completely destitute. The legal writing of the certificate takes time. The common, oral dismissal would nearly immediately land the wife out of the tent and on to the streets. The written dismissal gives her a few days, if not a few weeks to arrange for help. The certificate is proof that she may legally remarry.
Verses one through four are one long sentence. The second part for our consideration is the clause in (2) “If she goes and becomes another man’s wife, and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house….� The usual course for a destitute woman, especially with children, would be to find a man who would marry her and care for her needs. The Bible includes the book of Ruth, the beautiful story of Boaz falling in love with Ruth, a destitute woman, providing for all of her needs through the institution of marriage. But Boaz is one in a thousand. Most suitors interested in a woman with a certificate of divorce do not have love in mind. The chances of a woman who possesses a bill of divorce receiving another one were high. Moses protects the Israelite woman from being used and abused in the institution of marriage.
In a good number of cases, an older man may be willing to marry a younger woman who has a certificate of divorce and so Moses includes, “and if the latter man dies, who took her to be his wife, then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled.� Why would the first husband who divorced this woman for indecency have interest to marry her again? Perhaps her second and older husband, who died, generously willed a certain amount of property to her for her care. If the former husband remarries her, this property would become his property. Perhaps he would remarry her out of guilt – a bad recipe for marriage. The purpose of this legal clause is to protect the woman from being traded back and forth like a donkey. God’s law makes it clear that a woman is not an animal. She is not a piece of property owned by her husband. The third point Moses makes in these laws, then is that the dignity of the woman must be preserved.
How has this woman been defiled? She was defiled when her first husband divorced her for having bad breath. Even though the certificate gives her legal permission to remarry, what does such a petty dismissal do to the esteem of this woman created in the image of God? She snores at night. She talks too much. She’s a bad cook. She is beginning to sag and wrinkle. She is consumed with caring for the children. She has too much influence in my life. She holds me accountable. I’ve lost interest in her. I am the lord of this household. Who cares about her dignity, her esteem, her feelings, her destiny? This is the defilement. God’s law protects and expands the dignity of the woman. Every so often a particular husband in our worshipping community says to me, “The older my wife becomes, the more attracted I am to her. I am enjoying growing old with her. Each year we live together, the more I discover how much she compliments me, how much she completes me, how much she has to offer, how beautiful she is to me.� God bless you, brother. You have not defiled your wife but instead you have crowned her with love, honor, dignity, and glory.
Moses concludes, “And you shall not bring sin upon the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.� Once again, God’s transformation is comprehensive. God’s working in our personal lives is connected to his working in our marriages and families. His work in our marriages is connected to his work in the larger community. His work in all of us is connected to his renewal of the earth, the entire world. No husband may say, “My dear wife, I am divorcing you so that I have the time and resources to save Africa from AIDS and Malaria.� If the husband is called to such noble mission he must win his wife’s participation. He must say, “My dear wife, let’s go save Africa.� He must not abandon her for a higher calling.
Now we must attend to Jesus’ commentary on our text. When the Jewish leaders asked Jesus, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?� Jesus said, “Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives….� This is Jesus’ commentary on the entire Law of God – it exposes the hardness of our hearts, our desperate need for the Holy Spirit to warm and soften our hearts. The Gospel tells us how we may be transformed from the stony coldness that results in divorce to the warm love that results in a fruitful relationship. God’s law provides for divorce and when a man divorces his wife, he and all who know him must face the desperate nature of human relationships apart from God’s freedom and love. The Gospel proclaims that Christ Jesus, our bridegroom’s perfect fidelity to us, his bride, the Church, showers all of our relationships, even our marriages with a self-sacrificial and pleasing love ‘til death us do part.