The summary of chapter 4 which examines the background and
exegesis of the biblical material in David Atkinson, To Have and to Hold:
The Marriage Covenant and the Discipline of Divorce (St James’s Place,
London: Collins, 1979) reads as follows:
- The Pentateuchal laws on premarital intercourse, incest and adultery were framed to preserve the view that in marriage, a man and wife are united in what is intended to be an exclusive lifelong union.
- The legislation of Deut. 24:1-4 is the recognition of a permission (not prescription) for divorce, and gives legal conditions designed to reduce hasty divorce and minimize cruelty to the divorced wife. It thus recognizes the fact of marriage breakdown, and acknowledges the need for societal legislation to regulate divorce.
- Post-exilic writers reaffirm the divine intention for the permanence of marriage.
- Divorce is never encouraged or commanded in the Old Testament.
- The Synoptic divorce material reflects the Pharisaic dispute about the interpretation of the Pentateuchal legislation. In Jesus’ day, the death penalty for adultery was not enforced. Gentile readers under Roman law would, like Jews, have assumed that divorce following adultery was legally required.
- In the Synoptic material, Jesus reaffirms the divine law for the permanence of marriage, and brings divorce-with-remarriage under the seventh commandment against adultery.
- Matthew’s porneia clause (meaning ‘unlawful sexual intercourse’) are most satisfactorily seen as expounding the significance of Deut. 24 in the context of Jesus’ day, and as indicating the continuing need for societal legislation to regulate divorce because of ‘the hardness of men’s hearts’.
- The primary emphasis in Jesus’ teaching, however, is that in the will of God for marriage divorce has no place, and to initiate the ‘putting away’ of one’s spouse infringes the commandment against adultery.
- In the teaching of Paul, we find the same two emphases: the law of God for the permanence of marriage, and the recognition that there are circumstances [in] which it is important to legislate for exceptions.
- Both Testaments indicate that when divorce occurs (however wrongly), right of remarriage is presupposed; in other words, when a marriage has been broken, divorce dissolves the marriage ‘bond’ and covenant; the Bible does not know legal separation without the possibility of remarriage.
