Divorce, Separation, and the Broken Modern Paradigm
(Currently under scriptural and jurisprudential review)
Yahuchanon the Immerser was arrested and imprisoned by Herod for continually saying to him, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s woman,” and for rebuking Herod for all of the other wicked things which he had done. Notice, however, that Yahuchanon ‘s objection to Herodias was specifically that she was not one he could lawfully possess, even though he was already married to Phasaelis, the daughter of King Aertas IV of Nabataea. Under Roman law, a man could not have two wives, so he planned to divorce Phasaelis in order to marry Herodias. When Phasaelis learned of this, she fled back to her father.
His speech was exact. He did not merely say, “This wife of yours is not allowed by the Torah.” Instead, he denied that she was even his and insisted that Herodias still belonged to Phillip, his brother. To John, according to the Torah, an unlawful wife was not a wife at all.
But everyone else would have called this marriage, as many still would today. The question is, who was right?
The Pharisees asked Yahushua a foundational question: “Is it lawful for a man to separate from his woman for any reason at all?”
As discussed in Dabaq, the answer necessarily involves Genesis 1 and 2, and the final answer is, “What therefore Elohim has joined together, no person is to separate.” Notice that Yahushua appeals to the creation of mankind, not the establishment of the covenant with Yashar'el; marriage and its binding obligations therefore precede and extend beyond that covenant.
The natural follow-up question is, “Okay, but we did it anyway. So, now what?”
John’s position was essentially, “You accomplished nothing. The bond prevails against your unlawful process, therefore lawful possession was not produced,” and the same Ruach was active in his cousin, Yahushua. Hilel and Shamai were both wrong. Physical separation was possible, but dissolution of the status was not.
A man was able to give a wife a sefer kereitut, a certificate of separation, and send her away. However, if Jesus is telling us a full truth, that certificate does not necessarily tell a man, “I am free to remarry,” but rather, “my husband is not here, but I am a married woman who has been formally sent away.”
This question becomes complicated as we being combining scriptures. Our analysis must be through a comprehensive legal theory that properly systematizes and reconciles all of the text around this issue.
A Systematic Model as Proxy for the Underlying Model
The Torah gives us judicial findings as constraints to any model we might propose to explain the jurisprudence resulting from the True Model in the Mind of God. This proxy model can be derived from the Torah, and the New Testament writings give us guiding clarifications that correct the evolutions of law leading up to and extending past the Second Temple period.
An important distinction must be made between the underlying Law of God and the particular statutes through which He has revealed it. A statute is an authoritative expression of that Law applied to a particular class of circumstances, but it need not exhaust the underlying jurisprudence or enumerate every circumstance in which its principles operate. The Torah was delivered to Yashar'el as an established covenantal people, with a defined religious and judicial order. Consequently, its statutes often presuppose legal conditions that must be identified before their judgments can be extended to other circumstances. Our task is not merely to reproduce the statutory language, but to understand the principles that explain why Yahuwah legislated as He did.
Whichever model someone might propose, it must sufficiently explain all of the resulting jurisprudence of the Torah. In contrast to this idea, many seek out permissions from the text, and so, for example, rather than generating a systematic understanding of the Law, they might say, “see, Deuteronomy presupposes divorce as a lawful act. Therefore, I can divorce my husband,” while necessarily missing both that only husbands are ever authorized to initiate divorce and that, by the time she is married twice, she will have been defiled (this relies on assuming, rather handily, that a husband dying does not defile a woman, given that widows are allowed to remarry).
The assumption behind the move to create a systematic legal theory to explain Torah is that we have either a God who issued a list of possibly contradictory statutes or One who gave us a coherent, logical system of law. This author chooses to believe that Yah is not divided within Himself, and is instead a hyperrational, absurdly intelligent, pre-eternal being with no shortage of time or calculation power with which to design a coherent legal system for mankind. Resultingly, it seems blasphemous and satanic to bypass that reasoning to search for lawyeristic, clever, adversarial readings of the scriptures so as to cast doubt on any integrated, systematic legal theory one might presume in order to understand righteousness, morality, and holiness, the only clear reason set for doing which would be to promote the unrighteousness, immorality, and injustices of the nations from which the God-fearer is supposed to be set apart.
Therefore, the very premise of a Divine Intelligence with principled expectations and legislation for mankind militates against ad hoc rationalizations and special pleadings based on partial readings and selected passages rather than accounting for the coherent jurisprudence underlying the various charges, commandments, statutes, and laws of God. If we want to draw near to God, we should be like Abraham, keeping them all, and coming to an intimate understanding of Him (Genesis 26:5); and if we understand God, we should have an understanding of the rational bases for everything He has ordered through Moses.
Now, there is a critical piece of this argument that most Christians do not employ: John 1.
“In the beginning was the Dabar, and the Dabar was with Elohim, and the Dabar was Elohim.
It was in the beginning with Elohim.
All things came into being through it, and apart from it nothing came into being that has come into being.”
The Word of God being God is the key. In Genesis 1, the inspiration for John 1, we see Yahuwah speaking Creation into Order. He orates that there would be light, and expanse in the waters, celestial timekeeping, and everything else mentioned in that opening passage. That speech of God, like the words spoken through the prophets, are how we know His character and will.
Therefore, when Yahushua says, “what God has joined, no human is permitted to separate,” we know that the unchanging God would tell us nothing contrary to His nature. Therefore, if Moshe and Yahushua are true prophets, they both agree and, in combination, give us the revelations we need to determine what God does.
In other words, the Law of God is inseparable from the character and will of God; therefore, it describes those whom he joins and does not join. By extension, the authority of God is given to the Law which He has authorized; and this delegation of authority to the written letter of Law confers legal consequences upon Creation; so, we can equally say that the Law joins and a human cannot legitimately separate. Conversely, what mankind joins by human laws and customs may not be joined according to Law of God, as it may not be under its authorization – and we know that separations of God-joined couples are not performed under His authority, as he would not give that authority, meaning it is likewise not legitimate if it is claimed to be according to Yah’s authorization, because we know that He has legislated against divorce lacking the enumerated causes. Put another way, a legal act is either of God and under his authorization according to categories of His Law, or it is illegitimate, violating the law or its categories. This concept is a cornerstone of human law, just as it is in divine law.
Divine law runs in parallel with human law, as God has not left us fully over to human governance. Therefore, when humans marry according to a state governance, if that state governance asserts the ability to separate, then it is necessarily not operating under proper authority, i.e. that of God. Of course, a state could have a fully Torah-compatible marriage doctrine that does not result from the institution being Godly. This is the knot of the legitimacy problem, but it is undone by separating human and divine law, keeping both in mind as fully separate systems. Yahushua did not say that divorces are impossible – they happened every day under Roman governance and rabbinic governance alike – but rather that there is a legitimacy issue, an issue of whether God permitted the act. Even Caesar cannot nullify God’s law except by legal fiction enforced by state action, which is to say by rebellious authority. In the same way, secular courts do not care about what God has said.
Thus, the summary of the central claim is the following statement recognizable by any constitutional jurist:
Yahuwah need not personally join each man and woman by some separate act, for He has already established the legal system by which their lawful actions join them; and because those actions possess their binding force only by His authorization, it is ultimately Yahuwah who joins them.
Integrating NT Commentaries with the Scriptures
Rav Sha’ul wrote in 1 Corinthians 7:10-11 that a woman who separates from her man must remain celibate or reconcile with her husband so long as he lived. Paul talks about the woman separating from the man, whereas Jesus answers about a man’s ability to actually end the bond with his woman.
This creates a fascinating evidentiary reversal for the sefer. Instead of functioning as proof of freedom, it is proof of a previous man who has a lifelong claim on that woman. The community around that man would know who his wives are, but there was not a command to write a marriage certificate in the Law of Moshe – only a commandment to write a certificate for the separation.
Sha’ul describes five states of the once-married woman:
1) Married and with her husband
2) Married and celibate while separated
3) Reconciled
4) Not being under bondage
5) Widowed
Note that the first three states can be caused by the woman leaving, in which case she has no sefer, or the man sending her away having handed her a sefer. The real line of inquiry concerns validity of the sefer and what it accomplishes.
1) If the sefer is given for legitimate cause (porneia according to Jesus), then it is valid because the marriage was never valid and permanence is unfit for the union.
2) If the sefer is given for illegitimate cause (any other reason / no legitimate reason), it is invalid because the permanence of marital status and its duties are not overridden by procedure.
Notice, also, that people collapse two states: the separated woman and the woman free to remarry. 1 Corinthians 7:10-11 keeps these separate.
In light of this, Deuteronomy 24 has a peculiar detail that requires attention.
1 When a man takes a woman and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency [ervat davar, עֶרְוַת דָּבָר] in her, and he writes her a certificate of separation [sefer kereitut, סֵפֶר כְּרִיתֻת], puts it in her hand, and sends her away from his house,
2 and she leaves his house and goes and becomes another man's woman,
3 and if the latter man turns against her and writes her a certificate of separation, puts it in her hand, and sends her away from his house, or if the latter man dies who took her to be his woman,
4 then her former man who sent her away is not allowed to take her again to be his woman, since she has been defiled; for that is an abomination before Yahuwah, and you shall not bring sin on the land which Yahuwah your Elohim gives you as an inheritance.
Why does the second husband’s death not restore the first husband’s eligibility to take her if the only impediment was her second marriage? And what has been her defiling, the first marriage or the second? This informs us regarding ‘ervat davar,’ because if that is cause for divorce, and the second husband, in one case, can have merely died, then that means the problem rested in her joining to the first man. So, how can a man defile a woman by marrying her?
One of the two men defiled her, so anyone using Deuteronomy 24 to validate divorce and remarriage needs to answer this question.
If it is the second, she should have never remarried.
If it is the first, she cannot go back to him because being with him would defile her again.
In other words, she either left a defiling marriage or entered a defiling marriage.
If her first marriage is defiling, she was right to leave, but if it was not defiling, how can going back after the following husband dies be wrong?
Deuteronomy 22:13-21 gives us a clue.
If a man takes a woman, goes in to her, and afterward turns against her, accusing her of shameful conduct and claiming that he found no evidence of her virginity, then the young woman's father and mother shall bring the evidence of her virginity before the elders at the city gate.
Her father shall explain that he gave his daughter to the man, but the man has accused her falsely. The evidence shall be presented before the elders.
The elders shall discipline the man and fine him one hundred shekels of silver, which shall be given to the young woman's father, because the man brought a false accusation against a virgin of Yashar'el. She shall remain his woman, and he shall never be permitted to send her away throughout his life.
But if the accusation is true, and the evidence of the young woman's virginity is not found, she shall be brought to the entrance of her father's house. The men of her city shall stone her to death because she committed disgraceful conduct in Yashar'el by engaging in sexual immorality while in her father's house. Thus the evil shall be removed from among the people.
Here, the remedy for taking a woman’s virginity is affirmed to be [presumably] lifelong marriage. This matches up with Deuteronomy 22: 28-29, which states:
If a man encounters a virgin who is not betrothed, takes hold of her, lies with her, and they are discovered, then the man who lay with her shall give her father fifty shekels of silver.
She shall become his woman because he violated her, and he shall not be permitted to send her away throughout his life.
Twice, we see that a legitimate marriage is binding for life, so Romans 7:2-3 is not novel:
A woman who is under a man is bound by Torah to her living man; but if her man dies, she is released from the Torah concerning the man.
Accordingly, while her man lives, she will be called an adulteress if she becomes another man's woman. But if her man dies, she is free from that Torah, so that she is not an adulteress if she becomes another man's woman.
We see there is an exception to this in Ezra 10:
Shekhanyahu, son of Yechi'el, spoke to Ezra, acknowledging that the people had acted unfaithfully toward Elohim by taking foreign women from the peoples of the land. Nevertheless, he declared that there remained hope for Yashar'el.
He proposed making a covenant with Elohim to send away these women and the children born to them, according to the counsel of those who trembled at the commandments of Elohim, and to act according to the Torah.
Ezra the priest stood before the assembled people and declared that they had acted unfaithfully by taking foreign women, thereby increasing the guilt of Yashar'el.
He commanded them to confess to Yahuwah, the Elohim of their fathers, to do His will, and to separate themselves from the peoples of the land and from the foreign women.
This seems strange given the above material, until one realizes that the marriages were unlawful per Deuteronomy 7:3-4, which reads:
You shall not enter into marriage alliances with them. You shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor take their daughters for your sons.
For they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other elohim. Then the anger of Yahuwah will burn against you, and He will swiftly destroy you.
Here, Ezra’s remedy for an illicit marriage is to end it.
This also fits everything else above:
If a man marries an unbetrothed virgin, her father can prevent the marriage by “refusing refusingly,” or absolutely refusing, clearly indicating that there should be a serious reason. Such a father should certainly refuse to let her violate the law, so a prohibited union should cause that man to refuse the union.
If a woman wasn’t a virgin, but she presented herself to be, there is now a real possibility that some other man is supposed to marry her per Exodus 22, and the man is allowed to separate from her. Further, this woman is to be stoned to death, which is the same sentence as for adultery, except that the man is not involved, as he was an adulterer only unwillingly. This sounds extreme today, but in its context, she has either played the harlot or secretly married and divorced. This is a serious crime in the proper legal context.
If the woman marries a blood relative, there is no capital punishment, but there is now a legal controversy: is she legally married to a man she cannot have, or is the illicit nature of that union preventative of a legally-binding marriage? Considering that Deuteronomy 24 prevents that same man from taking her after the death of the second, this implies that the union between them is problematic, which, for two Israelites, can only otherwise be wrong in the event of them being improperly related. Therefore, the only justification we can glean from the body of statutes is that an illicit marriage is being ended in Deuteronomy 24, and New Testament writings about permanence fit precisely that gap with the only caveat being the allowance and command to end unlawful marriages. Therefore, if they can and should be separated, running Matthew 19 backwards, we can establish that God did not join the illicit couple, and going forwards, we can conclude that illicit couples can be separated. In other words, Yahushua gives us an operative definition of marriage: marriage is when God joins two people, and he does so according to the bounds of the Law; these unions being legally enforced while the man lives.
The proposal here is a status-based framework based on the woman’s history.
The Remedy for Categorically Unequal Yokes
Men are told by Moses not to marry women from the nations (i.e. other cultic backgrounds) so that their hearts are not turned away from Yahuwah. They are also told not to marry their daughters to foreigners. Yet, what happens when someone enters faith while already married outside the faith?
There is a conflict of interests: the believer has obligations, but had they entered the faith unmarried, they would have to refrain from marrying such a person as they were or their spouse still is. Is the correct remedy to keep the marriage and treat it as equally binding as a Torah-compatible marriage between two Yahwists? Is the correct action to fully flee the life of unbelief or contrary belief? Does justice require both simultaneously?
Yahuwah did not give us that answer through Moshe. However, Paul tells believing women to remain with their unbelieving men; and likewise, believing men are supposed to remain with their unbelieving spouses. This is so that they might save their spouses. Yet, he also says that if the unbeliever departs, the believer is not under bondage (or ‘enslaved’ – translations vary). Caution should be executed here, however, as he never explicitly says that the women can remarry, and the men are certainly always allowed to remarry so long as they did not illegitimately put away a wife to do so, as this would violate Exodus 21:10 and the clarifications of Jesus in Matthew 19 and parallel passages.
Notice, firstly, what Sha’ul absolutely does not say: that believers can divorce and remarry. Instead, he says that women are bound to their husbands until they die in Romans 7. Different Greek verbs are used by Paul, so we must be very careful. He describes possession or association (echō), willingness to cohabit (syneudokeō oikein), separation (chōrizō), and bondage (douloō).
The distinction in Sha’ul’s language deserves particular attention. In 1 Corinthians 7:12–16, he uses the ordinary Greek terms anēr (ἀνήρ) and gynē (γυνή), meaning man and woman, which also serve as the ordinary terms for husband and wife. He does not introduce some separate class of civil spouse or otherwise explicitly deny that the unbelieving man and believing woman are married. However, neither does he expressly describe their relationship as one which Elohim has joined or as an indissoluble bond.
Instead, he describes the believing man as having (echō, ἔχω) an unbelieving woman, and the believing woman as having an unbelieving man. The unbeliever is willing to live together with the believer (syneudokeō oikein, συνευδοκέω οἰκεῖν), and the believer is instructed not to send the unbeliever away. These are descriptions of an existing household and the conduct required of those within it. They establish that the relationship is recognized and that its continuation is permissible, but they do not, by themselves, establish the precise legal durability of that relationship.
This distinction is important because permitting an existing relationship to continue is not necessarily equivalent to authorizing its formation in the first place. A woman who comes to faith while already living with an unbelieving man has an established household, to which is necessarily attached a history of obligations and potentially children. Sha’ul does not instruct her to destroy that household merely because she now belongs to Yahuwah. Indeed, he says that the unbelieving man has been sanctified (hēgiastai, ἡγίασται – whatever exactly he means here) through the believing woman, and likewise the unbelieving woman through the believing man. He connects this sanctification with the holiness of their children. Whatever the precise legal implications of this sanctification, it supplies a reason that the mixed household may continue without requiring the believer to abandon it.
However, Sha’ul then introduces a different circumstance: the unbeliever separates (chōrizetai, χωρίζεται). In that case, the believing brother or sister is not enslaved (ou dedoulōtai, οὐ δεδούλωται). The verb dedoulōtai is the perfect passive indicative of douloō, meaning to enslave or bring into bondage. The expression is necessarily figurative in this context, since Sha’ul is not discussing literal slavery between the man and woman, but it does mean that the result of the history is a lack of current bondage to the household. Consequently, we must consider whether he is using the stronger, negatively connotated language of enslavement to describe the same kind of binding obligation that he elsewhere discusses in more ordinary legal terms.
In Romans 7:2–3, Sha’ul says that the woman is bound (dedetai, δέδεται) to her living man, using the perfect passive of deō (δέω), meaning to bind. He uses the same verb in 1 Corinthians 7:39, where the woman is bound as long as her man lives and, upon his death, is free to marry whom she wishes, only in the Adon. Thus, dedetai describes an established and continuing marital status, whereas ou dedoulōtai denies a condition of bondage in the particular circumstances of an unbeliever's departure.
The difference in vocabulary does not necessarily establish two different kinds of legal obligation. Sha’ul can use slavery language rhetorically, and the stronger word may emphasize the character or consequences of an obligation rather than identify an entirely separate institution. We do this today in the English language, and such emphatic speech as to liken an oppressive continuation of obligation as ‘slavery’ is not novel to linguistic history; such idioms and hyperbolic speech are ancient. Conversely, we cannot simply assume that the two verbs are interchangeable. The relationship between them must be determined from their use in context.
The tense also matters. Dedetai and dedoulōtai are both perfect passive forms, describing a present condition resulting from a prior action or state of affairs. When Sha’ul says ou dedoulōtai, he denies that the believing brother or sister stands in a condition of enslavement under such circumstances. He does not expressly say that a previously indissoluble marriage has now been dissolved, nor does he expressly command its dissolution. His statement concerns the believer's resulting status. This leaves open the possibility that the unbelieving man's departure reveals the limits of an obligation that never possessed the same enduring character as a marriage lawfully joined under Yahuwah's authority. The perfect tense is compatible with this reading, although it cannot independently prove that such an enduring bond never existed.
This distinction becomes particularly important when considering Deuteronomy 24. Its prohibition against a woman returning to her first man after becoming another man's woman presupposes marriages occurring within Yashar'el's established legal order. Sha'ul, however, addresses a different problem: a household formed outside that order, followed by the conversion of one party and the departure of the unbeliever. We cannot simply assume that the original union possessed the same legal status as one lawfully established under Torah, nor that the subsequent union produces the same defilement contemplated in Deuteronomy 24. The question is whether the underlying conditions giving rise to that judgment are actually present in the Pauline case. If the first union was never binding under Yahuwah's marital legislation, and the believing woman was lawfully released from its remaining obligations, her subsequent marriage to a Yahwist man would not necessarily constitute the prohibited remarriage contemplated by the statute. The example’s result would thereby be that the unbelieving man, the original husband, becomes a Yahwist and her second, Yahwist, husband dies, Deuteronomy 24 does not necessarily bar her from returning to her original husband, nor is there any longer a prohibition against her being with him, as he has now crossed over into the faith and is positively eligible to marry her. This makes further sense with the proper, collimated understanding of ervat devar, which, being found by a Yahwist who separates from the woman according to the law, can not apply to the wrong subject – in this case, an unbelieving man who divorced the woman of this example.
There is another finding: This is not merely a distinction concerning the application of Deuteronomy 24; it is necessary to explain how a believing woman could lawfully marry another man while her former unbelieving man remains alive. If her original union possessed the same enduring marital status as one joined by Yahuwah, her subsequent marriage would constitute adultery under Romans 7:2–3. Therefore, for Sha'ul's statement that the abandoned believer is “not enslaved” to permit remarriage, the original household must not have possessed that enduring status. Its continuation was permitted, and its obligations respected, without necessarily making it an indissoluble marriage under Yahuwah's authority. The unbeliever's departure would then terminate the conditional obligation to preserve that household, leaving the believing woman eligible to establish a lawful marriage within the faith.
This brings us back to the legitimacy of the original union. A relationship may have been established under the customs, religious practices, or civil authority of unbelievers before either party came to faith. When one subsequently becomes a believer, Sha’ul commands the preservation of that existing household if the unbeliever is willing to remain. But preservation is not necessarily proof that Yahuwah originally joined the parties in an indissoluble marriage. The believer's prior obligations and the interests of the household may justify its continuation without establishing that the same relationship could now be lawfully formed anew.
If the unbelieving man repudiates the believing woman, the question is therefore not merely whether she has been physically separated from him. It is whether she was ever placed under an enduring marital bond that continues to prohibit her from becoming another man's woman. If the original union was not lawfully established under Yahuwah's marital order, and its continuation was permitted because of the preexisting obligations of the household, then the unbeliever's departure may terminate those obligations without dissolving a marriage that Yahuwah had joined. The believing woman would consequently be free to establish a lawful marriage within the faith.
This explanation rests on separating authority, remedy, and status while recognizing that the legitimacy and durability of the status depend on the process and authorization of its formation.
If this interpretation is mistaken, the alternative is not that Sha'ul permits unrestricted separation and remarriage. Rather, it is that marriages formed outside the faith are also binding for life under Yahuwah's authority, and that “not enslaved” refers only to the believer's freedom from the obligation to maintain the abandoned household, not freedom to marry another man. Under that interpretation, the believing woman must remain celibate while her former man lives, even if he remains an unbeliever and refuses reconciliation. Thus, the question admits two possibilities consistent with the broader prohibition against adultery: either Sha'ul recognizes a conditional obligation arising from a pre-conversion household, which can end upon the unbeliever's departure, or the original marriage remains binding until the man's death. What cannot follow is a general permission to dissolve marriages that Yahuwah has joined.
The Devil’s Benefit
Consider this thought experiment as an illustration:
Suppose a hypothetical community that keeps the whole Law, except that there comes a dissuasion from proper marital doctrine; and only a handful have multiple wives – few enough to hand-wave out of the math. In a town with 800 married couples, 200 women divorce their husbands and remarry. Now, most of these men will not have a wife remaining, and some large cross-section of the men in this community keep the proper teachings. Say that a uniform 10% of the men believe that remarriage is valid, meaning that 20 of the divorced men 60 of the never-divorced will marry these 200 women. The women disproportionately favor monogamy, so the 20 men from the divorced group remarry and the other 180 go to the 60 at a 3:1 ratio.
We now have 60 men with 4 wives (3 new from the divorce wave), 20 men with a new wife, and 180 single men holding to the permanence doctrine, with 90% of the remainder (540 men) also preaching permanence.
Generation 1:
Pro-Permanence = 720 men and maximum 600 women
Anti-Permanence = 80 men and 200 women
These teach their kids likewise, and examples make their way into community discourse. Pastors do not correct the practice, and doubt regarding permanence takes root.
The next generation is more likely to divorce. The households with the new wives necessarily will teach that their behavior was valid, and these homes may even have more material success given that there is more cost-effort sharing. The example set then includes successful remarriage, and any claim of dysfunction with the polygynous households is countered by the claims of dysfunction in the original, mostly monogamous first marriages of the women who remarried. Therefore, remarriage due to marital dysfunction gains initial normalization, and the idea of remarrying for a better marriage supports both hypergamy and spousal evaluation than repairing the relationships. The children of this divorce-remarriage wave might be twice as likely to do what their mothers did, and even if the men do not budge, assuming a fixed replacement rate of reproduction, we get:
Generation 2:
Pro-Permanence = 720 men and 400 women
Anti-Permanence = 80 men and 400 women
The divorce rate doubles, and now half the men are both severely pressured to marry this large cohort of women and incentivized to, as a result, change their view because, in their experience, holding to the Law is situationally maladaptive. Now, at this point, there is no reason to trust the validity at all. What if Generation 3’s men simply refuses to marry?
If they refuse to marry, this says nothing about their underlying desire for companionship, their sex drive, or the developing willingness to engage in pre-marital or non-maritally oriented sex. The next generation of men and women may more easily marry each other knowing that they can exit, but that reinforces the idea that marriage is provisional rather than binding, especially if marriage is the pathway to socially-ecclesiastically acceptable sex. In this incentive structure, it could be better to marry and divorce than to get caught “fornicating.” Eventually, however, that distinction will be automatically challenged: why would marital status inform morality if marriage isn’t binding? If paperwork separates a protected act from sin, where is God in the moral determination? If God, therefore, only exists behind the priest or magistrate presumed to be His earthly actor, and we believe that the “man of God” (pastor, priest, bishop, etc.) or the “civil servants” (judges presumed to be doing the work of God as appointed to civil offices) is doing the earthly shadow of heavenly separation of the couple, then clearly God has allowed the separation and remarriage contrary to Yahushua’ words in Matthew 19. At this point, either Yahushua can not have meant what he said, or what he said can not be operatively authoritative to the people.
Notice here the worst tragedy: the men most committed to God in this thought experiment are less likely to reproduce, less likely to pass on their testimony to the proper Law, and more likely to live alone, without help, contrary to Genesis 2’s telos of Chava – in other words, the very reason for marriage has been undone when the men are single, and the women have become extraneous to the Project of God, indeed even adversarial, having used their reproductive capacity to produce heretics and deny reproduction to the faithful men.
Cui bono? Seemingly, Diabolos.
The holders of faithful doctrine are inwardly commanded to select themselves out of the reproductive project of mankind. Properly rigorous men have to choose: Keep the faith no matter what, or break the rules in order to explain the broken world and raise up children through that error to try and correct the issue – all while themselves bearing guilt and founding that project on the guilt that they detest, hoping that the hypocrisy will not discredit their testimony improperly. The former option eliminates the process of stable, learned, faithful men passing on the teaching to their children, which is the commanded and most successful vector; the latter soils the testimony before the work begins.
The error therefore acquires a reproductive advantage over its correction. The faithful man cannot defeat it by adopting its means without simultaneously furnishing evidence for its legitimacy; if he refuses those means, he may leave no children to whom he can transmit the opposing testimony. The corruption thus pressures its most rigorous opponents either toward participation or toward demographic disappearance, whereas the erroneous population easily teaches a lack of restraint by word and example to a species naturally allergic to restraint. This same population now has a greater hurdle to repentance, as proper practice will be deemed “legalistic, pharisaic control” in comparison to the faith they inherited from their fathers and mothers.
Repentance Would Be Expensive
Consider the implications of this paradigm if suddenly imposed upon the modern world. How many people have had cohabitative sexual relationships? How many women have left those? Even narrowing the application of the law to believers, how many people profess, in some capacity, that Moses was a true prophet of the true God, and yet have left such a household and entered into other sexual relationships?
How many women are actually off the marriage market?
How many men have put away women unlawfully?
How many men are locked out of marriages because all of the suitable women are actually married?
How many women need to run back to the same handful of men, unwilling to share them?
How many men need to release a wife?
How many women need to leave their children with one man and go back to another house?
There is no grace for this in the licentious manner that the church prefers. Repentance means solving the problem and getting back on the proper path, not washing one’s hands of a perpetuated sin.
Many of today’s Christians see divorce as a tragic result of sin that we should remedy with permission to remarry. However, this is dramatically out of line with God’s severe view on the topic. The Ecclesia lost the sword long ago, but the removal of capital punishment from the law books does not justify reversing our nature of response. If God sees adultery as a sin worthy of execution, we should not reward the behavior by allowing it to dissolve a marriage such that the offending party can remarry. If Yahushua spoke the truth when he said, “mankind shall not separate,” and Sha’ul is correct when he writes that a woman is bound to her rightful man by divine law until that man dies, then the church needs to prescribe the proper, albeit contextually punitive remedy, which Sha’ul does indeed give us: the woman shall remain celibate or reconcile to her husband.
Even if the church has no means to enforce this, the believing body can and should, in the very least, recognize that this person is acting in an unrepentant way and refuse to associate with them. This would apply to any man who willfully puts his lawful wife away and will not take her back and with the woman who left her household and is not trying to reconcile. This should also apply to the new man of such a woman, as he is in active adultery.
Under Torah's original judicial order, a man convicted of adultery would have been subject to death (Leviticus 20:10; Deuteronomy 22:22). The Ecclesia does not possess that judicial authority, but it retains the responsibility to judge persistent wrongdoing within its own fellowship. Yahushua commands that the brother who refuses correction be treated as a Gentile and a tax collector (Matthew 18:15–17), and Sha'ul expressly commands withdrawal of fellowship from the unrepentant sexually immoral brother (1 Corinthians 5:9–13). Thus, the absence of the former penalty is no justification for abandoning the latter discipline.
A more complete body of citations required for understanding this is in the block below:
Marriage and the prohibition against unlawful separation:
Genesis 2:24; Deuteronomy 24:1–4; Malachi 2:14–16; Matthew 5:31–32; 19:3–12; Mark 10:2–12; Luke 16:18; Romans 7:2–3; 1 Corinthians 7:10–11, 39.
The seriousness of adultery and sexual immorality:
Leviticus 18:20, 24–30; 20:10; Deuteronomy 22:22; Matthew 5:27–30; 15:18–20; Mark 7:20–23; 1 Corinthians 6:9–10, 15–20; Hebrews 13:4.
Repentance requires a change of conduct:
Ezekiel 18:21–32; Proverbs 28:13; Matthew 3:8; 4:17; 7:21–23; Luke 3:8–14; 13:3–5; 17:3–4; Acts 3:19; 26:20; Romans 6:1–2, 15.
Correction, witnesses, and ecclesial judgment:
Leviticus 19:17; Deuteronomy 19:15; Matthew 18:15–20; Luke 17:3–4; 1 Corinthians 5:1–13; Galatians 6:1; 2 Thessalonians 3:6, 14–15.
Withdrawal of fellowship from the persistently unrepentant:
Matthew 18:17; 1 Corinthians 5:9–13; Romans 16:17–18; 2 Thessalonians 3:14–15; Titus 3:10–11.
Forgiveness, restoration, and the rejection of continued sin:
Matthew 6:14–15; 18:21–35; Luke 17:3–4; Romans 6:1–2; 2 Corinthians 2:5–11; 7:9–11; James 5:19–20.
The obligation to correct unlawful unions:
Deuteronomy 7:3–4; Ezra 9:1–2; 10:2–3, 10–11, 44; Matthew 14:3–4; Mark 6:17–18; 1 Corinthians 5:1–5.
