Mark 10:1-12, Teaching About Divorce

¹ And he left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan, and crowds gathered to him again. And again, as was his custom, he taught them. [Up until now, Jesus had a Galilean ministry. As he heads to Jerusalem and the cross, Jesus enters Judea as a popular teacher with an expanding fan base. Chapters 10-15 take place in Judea a more sophisticated area around the big city of Jerusalem compared to the poorer peasant Galilee. Jerusalem has the temple, the Sanhedrin, and the aristocratic Sadducees.]

² And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” [What is behind this question? They are trying to get Jesus to compromise himself and disagree with Moses. They could also be trying to get Jesus to align with John the Baptist to get him in trouble with Herod Antipas.] ³ He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” [Jesus will give a new depth of meaning to the law. Note how he answers a question with a question. Moses, of course, did not command divorce but permitted it.] ⁴ They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” [Since they already know the answer to the question they have asked, we know they are not sincere in asking his opinion.] ⁵ And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. [Jesus draws attention to the fatal flaw in humanity. The law is a reaction to the sinfulness of human beings. In a sense Jesus says, “Moses allowed this because easy divorce is better than open adultery and defiance of God’s purpose for marriage.” It is the lesser of two evils. Polygamy is similar. It is never praised but tolerated. There are no good examples of it since it is not God’s plan for humanity.] ⁶ But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ⁷ ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to [no one else but] his wife, ⁸ and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. ⁹ What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” [God’s plan was for the sexual union between the two sexes, instituted by God for mutual support and companionship. Marriage was not a temporary convenience to end on the whim of human will. It is the closest human bond—even greater than the parent/child bond. Divorce, therefore, is a human initiative and act.]

¹⁰ And in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. ¹¹ And he said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, ¹² and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” [Cole: “The first Century was a time in which divorce was perilously easy and common, whether in Judaism or paganism. Jesus assumes as a matter of course that a divorced party will, in either case, remarry; it is such remarriage after willful divorce which is branded as adultery.]