Is it Biblical to marry a divorced person?

Yeah it's a complex situation to consider carefully and prayerfully i believe.

👍, and it's not wrong to seek out opinions from those that know you, and ideally from those that know the person of your interest too. Due diligence 👍

Yes Experience is a painful teacher, therefore due diligence is vital here.

If the person's divorce is unbiblical and there is a duty t o reconcile with the other party, then the person who marries the divorcee is considered an adulterer. So I think you should know her/his reasons for divorce at first.

When I was looking to marry, divorced women were not in my consideration set.

Matthew 19:9b
"...and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery. "

1 Corinthians 7:7-9
For I wish that all men were even as I myself. But each one has his own gift from God, one in this manner and another in that. But I say to the unmarried and to the widows: It is good for them if they remain even as I am; but if they cannot exercise self-control, let them marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

Yes. I've quoted these verses many times in this forum.

What's your point?

I think that needs to be qualified. I think what Jesus is meaning here, is that if you marry a person that has been divorced because of their unchaste behaviour, you will be committing adultery. Then we also have to consider the question of repentance and forgiveness. But it is safe to say, if you have been unchaste towards your spouse in any way, then you can expect a long hard road ahead in some shape or form, whether that be on this earth or afterwards, it won't be easy for you, irrespective!

Where does it say that? The former part of the verse has the man divorcing his wife, except it be for fornication.

Can you find any passages where Christ speaks of women divorcing and remarrying in a positive way? He forbids men from divorcing and remarrying in Mark and Luke. Matthew contains 'except it be for fornication.' Matthew 5:23 says, "32 But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery. "

Where is the passage that says a woman can divorce and remarry if her first husband committed adultery? The law of Moses did not allow for wives divorcing husbands. Christ only mentioned it in a verse where He forbade it.

Well, common sense would tell us, that God being the Creator of fairness and justice, won't punish the innocent. Take careful note of the Lord Jesus' nature... can you see Him punishing an innocent party, even that from a divorce? Of course He won't! That being the case, we can derive that the inference is if anyone chooses to marry someone that has wrongfully divorced their previous spouse, they will be committing adultery with that divorced person, and vice versa.

If by "self-pleasuring" you mean masturbation, then I believe that Jesus condemned that here:

Matthew chapter 5

[27] Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:
[28] But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
[29] And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
[30] And if thy right hand offend thee, cut if off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

Within the context of adultery, which Jesus equated with simply lusting after another in one's heart, Jesus mentioned both one's eye and one's hand.

The eye part is rather obvious, but why did he mention one's hand?

To my understanding, he was referring to "self-pleasuring" or masturbation.

If such is indeed the case, and I personally believe that it is, then Jesus said that it would be better to cut one's own hand off than to have their whole body cast into hell.

In the old testament, a woman did not have to live with an adulterous husband because he would have been stoned. That would be her "get out of jail" card to marry another person.

Well, this is a topic which definitely hits close to home for me...and for more than one reason.

For starters, I was married for almost 18 years, and my ex ultimately committed adultery several times, and then divorced me.

With such being the case, am I the so-called "innocent party" who is free to remarry?

Honestly, I don't know, and I've read the entire Bible from cover to cover many times, and prayed about this innumerable times as well.

When it comes to the topic of marriage or anything related to it, I think that it's best that we begin by realizing that marriage was instituted by God to mirror the relationship between Christ and the church.

To this end, Paul wrote:

Ephesians chapter 5

[22] Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
[23] For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.
[24] Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.
[25] Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
[26] That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,
[27] That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.
[28] So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.
[29] For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church:
[30] For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.
[31] For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.
[32] This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.
[33] Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.

With such in mind, I think that a good question to ponder is this:

Would Christ ever divorce someone?

In my understanding of scripture, the answer to this question is "yes".

We read:

Jeremiah chapter 3

[1] They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man's, shall he return unto her again? shall not that land be greatly polluted? but thou hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to me, saith the LORD.
[2] Lift up thine eyes unto the high places, and see where thou hast not been lien with. In the ways hast thou sat for them, as the Arabian in the wilderness; and thou hast polluted the land with thy whoredoms and with thy wickedness.
[3] Therefore the showers have been withholden, and there hath been no latter rain; and thou hadst a whore's forehead, thou refusedst to be ashamed.
[4] Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, My father, thou art the guide of my youth?
[5] Will he reserve his anger for ever? will he keep it to the end? Behold, thou hast spoken and done evil things as thou couldest.
[6] The LORD said also unto me in the days of Josiah the king, Hast thou seen that which backsliding Israel hath done? she is gone up upon every high mountain and under every green tree, and there hath played the harlot.
[7] And I said after she had done all these things, Turn thou unto me. But she returned not. And her treacherous sister Judah saw it.
[8] And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot also.
[9] And it came to pass through the lightness of her whoredom, that she defiled the land, and committed adultery with stones and with stocks.

Because of Israel's repeated spiritual whoredoms, God "put her away, and gave her a bill of divorce" (vs. 8).

Seeing how God divorced Israel for her whoredoms, I do believe, in accordance with the "exception clause", that a man can justifiably put away or divorce his wife for the cause of sexual immorality.

That said, we must also strongly consider something else that God said here, namely this:

"They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man's, shall he return unto her again? shall not that land be greatly polluted? but thou hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to me, saith the LORD."

While citing the famous/infamous passage from Deuteronomy chapter 24, the LORD said unto his whorish wife whom he had put away and given a bill of divorce "yet return again to me, saith the LORD".

In other words, the LORD, apparently, left the door open for reconciliation even after his divorce.

I don't claim to have all of the answers, but this definitely opens up another question for me:

If a man puts away his wife justifiably due to sexual immorality, is he then responsible to also leave open the door for reconciliation with his former spouse?

If, instead, he gets remarried, then how would this type of reconciliation which the LORD himself offered to his divorced spouse be possible?

Like I said, I don't have all of the answers, but this particular question has kept me in a holding pattern of sorts or hindered me from 100% considering the possibility of remarriage in my own life.

Beyond this, this also hits very close to home in that I'm constantly confronted with other professing Christians who are in similar situations.

In fact, just last night I was on the phone with a divorced Christian, and we were discussing this very topic.

And I should add, that the Lord seems to be saying in the scripture you've referred to, that if we divorce our wife/husband because of their unchastity, we may be inadvertently forcing them further into adultery...if he/she is repentant, I believe God would hope for us to apply mercy, and forgiveness. It would be fair to say that the same rule would apply to a man or a woman.

A college student I knew held to the same interpretation, and said he was glad it didn't say to chop off the other part. That seemed a strange interpretation to me.

I wonder if the connection for some men comes from associating masturbation with pornography. I suppose there could have been some peeping-toms who happened to live on high rooves in Jerusalem or elsewhere in the middle east, but otherwise I would suspect pornography might be rare in Jewish areas. One would not have to lust after some individual to masturbate, and one can look lustfully without masturbating, so it seems like a stretch. The hand could also inappropriately touch someone, be used in what leads up to an affair-- along with speaking, etc.

The idea of removing a hand shows up in Matthew 18 also, where there is nothing sexual mentioned in the context:

Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire.

Why is this an issue of fairness/justice? In regard to mistreating one's wife by kicking her to the curb, expelling her, not providing for, etc., because a woman is prettier (Akiva's justification for replacing a wife), that is unjust.

I read a book on American Culture once written for foreigners that was actually insightful. It said that Americans tended to think that the purpose of marriage was to make one happy, and if one was not happy in a marriage, one could remarry and be happy. A lot of people think it is a right to be married and to be happy in marriage. This is an assumption that undergirds American thinking on the subject, and we probably share that with some other western cultures.

But if you come at this from more of a 'moral purity' approach, what did Jesus say? He referred back to 'two, saith he, shall be one flesh.' The original intent and design was for man and wife to stay together, and to engage in sexual intercourse exclusively with one another.

If marriages aren't working at, at least at the moment, why is celibacy treated as if it were a death sentence or a violation of human rights (not by you, necessarily, just speaking more generally)?

We should also consider the law as it was given in the Old Testament did not treat male and female sexuality exactly the same. I do not see how polygamy is consistent with Christ's teaching--going back to the original intent-- but Abraham was righteous and he had two wives for a time, and sent the concubine one off into the desert at the Lord's instruction. David had a number of wives-- five as I recall-- and maybe some concubine wives whose names aren't mentioned by name but who are referenced in the story of Absalom. But David's adultery was with a married woman. At least with the revelation they had in the Old Testament, a married woman having sex with another man besides her husband was adultery. Women could not have multiple husbands.

The law also did not give a woman any right to put away her husband or to give her husband a binding writ of divorce. There is no mention of it in scripture or nothing that validates the unilateral divorce of a woman toward her husband, though secular law of some states allow it.

Even the language Paul uses may reflect this when he tells wives not to depart from their husbands and forbids husbands from putting away their wives.

Christians should differentiate between what is legal according to the law of secular states and what is 'legal' before God. A few generations ago, divorce was so much rarer among Christians than it is today, even in denominations that might be considered somewhat liberal. There is a tendency to assume cultural standards and mores for divorce are the norm and try to conform Biblical interpretation to them.

On the spiritual side of things, Israel is depicted as the wife. Adultery is a horrible thing. Two shall be one flesh is also a mystery that speaks of Christ and the church, and the church must be devoted to Christ and be faithful.

That's assuming Israel followed the law, and also assuming that there were two or three witnesses.

But the adultery they would stone for would be if he had lain with a married woman. If he'd done so with an unbethrothed virgin, they'd have compelled him to take a second wife. At least that is how they probably would have done it back when some of the men were practicing polygamy.

In the opposite case, where a wife committed adultery, if there were two or three witnesses, they could be stoned. I can't help but imagine adulterers might have hidden somewhere to do the deed rather than doing it in public. But there was the water that brings a curse ritual for men who were jealous of their wives, suspecting them of infidelity, to put a curse on those who had.

There seems to have been an association to pregnancy in those verses as well:

Numbers 5:11-31 NIV

The Test for an Unfaithful Wife
11 Then the Lord said to Moses, 12 “Speak to the Israelites and say to them:
‘If a man’s wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him 13 so that another man
has sexual relations with her, and this is hidden from her husband and her
impurity is undetected (since there is no witness against her and she has
not been caught in the act), 14 and if feelings of jealousy come over her
husband and he suspects his wife and she is impure—or if he is jealous
and suspects her even though she is not impure— 15 then he is to take
his wife to the priest. He must also take an offering of a tenth of an ephah
of barley flour on her behalf. He must not pour olive oil on it or put incense
on it, because it is a grain offering for jealousy, a reminder-offering to draw
attention to wrongdoing.

16 “‘The priest shall bring her and have her stand before the Lord. 17 Then he
shall take some holy water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle
floor into the water. 18 After the priest has had the woman stand before the Lord,
he shall loosen her hair and place in her hands the reminder-offering, the grain
offering for jealousy, while he himself holds the bitter water that brings a curse.
19 Then the priest shall put the woman under oath and say to her, “If no other
man has had sexual relations with you and you have not gone astray and become
impure while married to your husband, may this bitter water that brings a curse
not harm you. 20 But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and
you have made yourself impure by having sexual relations with a man other than
your husband”— 21 here the priest is to put the woman under this curse—“may the
Lord cause you to become a curse among your people when he makes your womb
miscarry and your abdomen swell. 22 May this water that brings a curse enter your
body so that your abdomen swells or your womb miscarries.”
“‘Then the woman is to say, “Amen. So be it.”

23 “‘The priest is to write these curses on a scroll and then wash them off into the
bitter water. 24 He shall make the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse,
and this water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering will enter her. 25 The
priest is to take from her hands the grain offering for jealousy, wave it before the
Lord and bring it to the altar. 26 The priest is then to take a handful of the grain
offering as a memorial offering and burn it on the altar; after that, he is to have
the woman drink the water. 27 If she has made herself impure and been unfaithful
to her husband, this will be the result: When she is made to drink the water that
brings a curse and causes bitter suffering, it will enter her, her abdomen will swell
and her womb will miscarry, and she will become a curse. 28 If, however, the woman
has not made herself impure, but is clean, she will be cleared of guilt and will be able
to have children.

29 “‘This, then, is the law of jealousy when a woman goes astray and makes herself
impure while married to her husband, 30 or when feelings of jealousy come over a
man because he suspects his wife. The priest is to have her stand before the Lord
and is to apply this entire law to her. 31 The husband will be innocent of any
wrongdoing, but the woman will bear the consequences of her sin.’”

Not replying to anyone in particular, just popping into the thread.

This seems simple to me. If God forgives someone for an illegitimate divorce then we shouldn’t continue to hold that charge against them. Our inability to forgive someone completely and remember their sins no more doesn’t make them deserving of continual condemnation and punishment, but actually it’s us who are wrong for keeping a record of their wrongs.

If God forgives a man for not providing for not providing for his children, what is the man's next step forward. Should he continue to not provide for his children?

If a man were to divorce his wife, what is the next step forward?