Ordinary Days #16: Divorce

You shall not side with the majority

   so as to pervert justice. (Exodus 23:2) 

The Disciples of Jesus complained about Jesus’ teaching on divorce: “If those are the terms of marriage, we’re stuck” (Mt 19:10). It remains true to this day. It’s a minority point of view. It may go back to the minority report of “Jonathan son of Asahel and Jahzeiah son of Tikvah who opposed this, and Meshullam and Shabbethai the Levites who supported them” (Ezra 10:15). The “this” that they opposed was the religious zeal of the majority insisting on mass divorce of all those married to a foreign women. After the zealous majority had their way; the book of Ezra ends with these words: “And so all those who had married foreign women, sent them away with their children.”

Jonathan and Jahzeiah, along with a few priests who supported them, didn’t feel right about the whole thing. There was something unjust about it. Does Torah teach that one must divorce his wife if she is a foreigner? Was it really what God desirers? Torah tells how “Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married (for he had indeed married a Cushite woman)” (Nu 12:1). The parenthetical lets us know that it was really true. Zipporah was a foreign woman. To the surprise of the pious; God sides, in a big way, with Moses and Zipporah.

Maybe Jonathan and Jahzeiah retold the story of Ruth and how it is that David’s great-grandma was a Moabites. Perhaps that is why the prophet Malachi, a contemporary of Ezra, blurts out “God hates divorce.” Centuries later, the Apostle Paul will follow along the same lines as the minority: “If any believer has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. And if any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him.  For the unbelieving husband is made holy through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy through her husband. Otherwise, your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy” (1Cor 7:12-14). Christ and the Apostles, and thus the church, side with the minority report. Paul reasons the holiness of the believer is not threated; but rather, overcomes whatever unholiness the unbeliever may bring—“your children are holy.” Isn’t that something?

I shouldn’t dismiss the Apostle’s next few verses: "But if one separates..." Divorce happens. But it must never be for pious reasons. Divorce is always tragic. God hates it.