This is a post I originally made in the forums in response to someone saying that marrying a divorced person is equal to adultery and therefore sinful and all divorced people should remain unmarried. Since this idea is spread a lot around various forums as what the Bible says, I decided to do a quick Bible search on the word divorce and here's some of what I found posted in the hopes that those facing or who have been through a divorce can have a better idea of what the Bible teaches.
Quick Bible search on divorce reveals:
OT law: Divorce and remarriage were permitted under God's covenant (i.e. not sin) (Deuteronomy 24:1-2) except in special circumstances, usually involving the man having sexual relations with the woman before marriage and thus making her ineligible for marriage to anyone else ( see Deut 22) (In Jeremiah 3:8 God uses the same word for divorce and says he divorced Israel for faithlessness). The word for divorce used here comes from a root meaning cut off.
Ezra 10: There was a problem that the covenant people had taken pagan wives and they made a covenant with God to send them away. Some translations use divorce here though the Hebrew word is different and means more of of sending out or movement away from. Their sin in this case was not the "divorcing" but the marrying.
Mal 2:16- the famous God hates divorce passage. Divorce in this case is yet another Hebrew word meaning to cast out or send away. Some people speculate that what was happening in this case is that the men were abandoning their wives and the responsibility to provide for them without even giving them the legal freedom of divorce to find another husband who would take care of them. And the translations vary between whether God hates this or whether a man who does this to his wife is showing her hatred. The passage is clear that breaking the marriage vows is evil, an act of treachery, but places no blame on the one who was gotten rid of.
Matt 5: 31-32 This is the famous passage on divorce equals adultery. Interestingly enough, this comes in Jesus' sermon on the mount right after the part about adultery and right before the part about vows. To be fair in this sermon Jesus also says that being angry with someone equals murder and lust equals adultery and you should chop off body parts that cause you to lust. We better enforce those things as well if we're going to be fully obedient to scripture.
Jesus has another discussion about divorce in Matt 19. He states that divorce isn't God's design, and that a man who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery- unless his wife had been unfaithful.
So in light of the fact that God permitted divorce among his covenant people, and the context of what Jesus said about divorce being so tightly linked to adultery, I think the most just interpretation is Jesus' meaning was that divorcing your spouse so that you can be with someone else is just as evil as if you actually committed adultery and cheated on your spouse. Just like it wouldn't be acceptable in God's sight to plan to get married, sleep together, and then divorce an hour later so that you didn't technically commit fornication. That interpretation also seems much more in line with Jesus telling the woman caught in adultery to go and sin no more and Paul's counsel in 1 Cor 7 to let unbelieving spouses leave if they wish, since believers aren't bound in such a case.
I'm sure this isn't an exhaustive study, but hopefully it can encourage some people who show up and get out of context Bible verses thrown at them.
Quick Bible search on divorce reveals:
OT law: Divorce and remarriage were permitted under God's covenant (i.e. not sin) (Deuteronomy 24:1-2) except in special circumstances, usually involving the man having sexual relations with the woman before marriage and thus making her ineligible for marriage to anyone else ( see Deut 22) (In Jeremiah 3:8 God uses the same word for divorce and says he divorced Israel for faithlessness). The word for divorce used here comes from a root meaning cut off.
Ezra 10: There was a problem that the covenant people had taken pagan wives and they made a covenant with God to send them away. Some translations use divorce here though the Hebrew word is different and means more of of sending out or movement away from. Their sin in this case was not the "divorcing" but the marrying.
Mal 2:16- the famous God hates divorce passage. Divorce in this case is yet another Hebrew word meaning to cast out or send away. Some people speculate that what was happening in this case is that the men were abandoning their wives and the responsibility to provide for them without even giving them the legal freedom of divorce to find another husband who would take care of them. And the translations vary between whether God hates this or whether a man who does this to his wife is showing her hatred. The passage is clear that breaking the marriage vows is evil, an act of treachery, but places no blame on the one who was gotten rid of.
Matt 5: 31-32 This is the famous passage on divorce equals adultery. Interestingly enough, this comes in Jesus' sermon on the mount right after the part about adultery and right before the part about vows. To be fair in this sermon Jesus also says that being angry with someone equals murder and lust equals adultery and you should chop off body parts that cause you to lust. We better enforce those things as well if we're going to be fully obedient to scripture.
Jesus has another discussion about divorce in Matt 19. He states that divorce isn't God's design, and that a man who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery- unless his wife had been unfaithful.
So in light of the fact that God permitted divorce among his covenant people, and the context of what Jesus said about divorce being so tightly linked to adultery, I think the most just interpretation is Jesus' meaning was that divorcing your spouse so that you can be with someone else is just as evil as if you actually committed adultery and cheated on your spouse. Just like it wouldn't be acceptable in God's sight to plan to get married, sleep together, and then divorce an hour later so that you didn't technically commit fornication. That interpretation also seems much more in line with Jesus telling the woman caught in adultery to go and sin no more and Paul's counsel in 1 Cor 7 to let unbelieving spouses leave if they wish, since believers aren't bound in such a case.
I'm sure this isn't an exhaustive study, but hopefully it can encourage some people who show up and get out of context Bible verses thrown at them.