Sermon Tone Analysis

*AND* (Marriage - divorce)

Ref. 2246

*BIBLE READING*: Luke 16:18

 

*INTRODUCTION*:

Any man who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and a man who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.

(Luke 16:18)

 

In the first half of Luke 16:18, Jesus appears to teach that a man who has divorced his wife should not remarry.

In the verse's second half, Jesus seems to say that no man should marry a divorced woman.

Does this simplistic interpretation of a difficult verse do justice to Jesus' approach to Torah?

 

Luke 16:18 is very "Semitic," that is, it is full of Semitic idioms, an indication that Jesus may have uttered it in Hebrew or Aramaic.

Members of the Jerusalem School of Synoptic Research have learned that the most effective way to approach a passage from the synoptic gospels is, first, to put its Greek text into Hebrew, then, study the resultant Hebrew reconstruction in light of first-century Jewish exegesis.2

NUANCES OF HEBREW "AND"

While the English word "and" can mean "also," "as well as," or can be used like a comma to connect words, phrases and sentences, the Hebrew - (vav, and) can do the work of "but," "or," "so," "then," "because," "therefore," "namely," "since," "while," "on the contrary," and more.

Hebrew frequently uses "vav" where English would use no word at all, and in such cases the best translation is simply to drop the "and" entirely.

In many instances, to translate vav as "and" would obscure the vav's true meaning.

Greek Kai (kai, and), like English "and," does not have the wide range of meaning possessed by Hebrew vav.

Old Testament commentators and translators are well aware of the many idiomatic usage's of vav, but their New Testament counterparts have only begun to examine the kais of the gospels.

Obviously, Jewish thought heavily influences the gospels, and if, as well, Jesus uttered his sayings in Hebrew, an English translation that did not take this Hebraic background into account would fall short.

Translating every kai literally as "and" may be as inaccurate as translating every vav in the Hebrew Scriptures as "and."

The "And" of Purpose

"In order to, in order that, so that" is another meaning of vav (and).

Scholars refer to this vav as the "and of purpose or intention."4

It occurs frequently in biblical Hebrew, for example: "Let my people go, and [i.e., so that] they may worship me in the wilderness" (Exodus 7:16).5

Apparently, contrary to normal Greek usage, Greek's kai (and) in the sense of "to, in order to" occurs in the synoptic gospels.

An example of this usage may exist in Luke 16:18a: "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery."6

The meaning "in order to" fits Luke 16:18a better than simple "and."

The Greek text?

reverts easily and smoothly to beautiful Hebrew: “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries [i.e., in order to marry] another [f.] is committing adultery)”.8

VAV (and) in the sense of "in order to" is also attested in Mishnaic or Middle Hebrew, the Hebrew that many scholars in Israel believe Jesus spoke.

See, for example: "He who begins to wish that his wife will die and (i.e., in order that] he will inherit her property, or that she will die and (i.e., in order that] he will marry her sister..." Tosefta, Sotah 5:10).9

The Jewish Background

The background to Jesus' saying seems to be a debate between the schools of Shammai and Hillel concerning the grounds for divorce.

The debate revolves around the interpretation of an expression found in Deuteronomy 24:1: "After a man has taken a wife and consummated the marriage, if she ceases to please him because he has found an indecency of thing in her, then he shall write her a bill of divorce, hand it to her and send her away from his house."

The expression literally, "indecency of thing," is obscure.

Consequently, it lends itself to various interpretations, as the rabbinic debate shows: The school of Shammai says: "A man may not divorce his wife unless he has found a thing of indecency in her, for it is written, 'because he has found an indecency of thing in her."'

But the school of Hillel says: "[He may divorce her even if she ruined a dish of food she prepared for him], for it is written, 'because he has found an indecency of thing in her."' Rabbi Akiva says: "Even if he found another more beautiful than she, for it is written, 'if she ceases to please him."'

(Mishnah, Gittin 9:10)

 

According to Shammai's interpretation, the emphasis should be on the word "indecency" in the phrase "indecency of thing."

Therefore, reversing the order of the words, he interprets the phrase as "a thing of indecency,"10 that is, "something indecent."

In his view, marital infidelity is the only grounds for divorce.

According to Hillel, however, the emphasis should be on the word, "thing."

In Hillel's view, a husband may divorce his wife for anything, for instance, for any imperfection or for any act that is offensive to him.

He is permitted to divorce her even for burning his toast.

Rabbi Akiva agrees that it is the husband's right to divorce his wife for any cause, illustrating his point with an extreme example: A husband may divorce his wife even if he finds another woman who is more pleasing to him."

A key link to Jesus' saying is the word "another" in Akiva's statement: "Even if he found (a-HE-ret, another [f) more beautiful than she."

Jesus' use of this word in a divorce context makes it likely that he was attacking the view espoused by Rabbi Akiva.

(Although Akiva lived approximately one hundred years after Jesus, Luke 16:18a suggests that Akiva's view existed in Jesus' day.)

Here, Jesus gives a legal opinion.

Siding with Shammai, he rules that there is only one cause for divorce-marital unfaithfulness.12

Luke 16:18b and "Translation-ease"

From internal and external evidence, scholars of the Jerusalem School have reached the conclusion that the earliest stratum of the synoptic gospel tradition was communicated in Hebrew; therefore, when evaluating gospel passages they apply, among others, the test of "translation-ease," the ease with which one is able to translate a passage to Hebrew.

If a passage translates easily to Hebrew, they tend to assume it belongs to the earliest stratum of the text; if not, they suspect it may have been added, or modified, by a Greek hand during or after the text's translation to Greek.

The beautiful Greek of Luke's prologue (Luke 1:1-4), for instance, testifies that the prologue is a later addition to the gospel story.

The first half of Luke 16:18 translates easily into Hebrew; but its second half (literally, "and the one, a woman having been dismissed from a husband, marrying, commits adultery") is difficult to put into Hebrew.

Since the verse's second half does not pass the "translation-ease" test, one might suspect that it was not originally part of Jesus' saying; on the other hand, it contains a Matthean - Lukan minor agreement-Matthew and Luke (Mt.

5:32b; Luke 16:18b) agree against Mark (Mk. 10:12) to use the word (apolelymenen, having been dismissed [f).

Minor agreements (see Glossary) are a strong indication of originality;13 therefore, it is likely that initially the saying did have two parts, and that Luke or the author of the First Reconstruction, the second of Luke's two sources, modified the saying's second part.

A Hebraic Doublet

If we assume this saying had two parts, there is a strong possibility that the second part was the second component of a Hebrew doublet.

Though superfluous to the Greek ear, repetition of words, phrases, sentences, and even stories, is characteristic of Hebrew.

Parallelism- expressing the same thought in two or more different, though synonymic, ways-for instance, is the hallmark of Hebrew poetry.

When teaching, Jesus frequently employed doublets (e.g., "tax collectors and sinners"; Mat.

11:19, Luk.

7:34) and parallelisms (e.g., "Do not travel Gentile roads, and do not enter Samaritan cities" (Matthew 10:5], where "travel" is a synonym for "enter," and "Gentile roads" is a synonym for "Samaritan cities").

14

 

If we reconstruct Luke 16:18b, staying as close to the Greek text as the Hebrew language will allow, we get:  (ve-ha-no-SE et ha-ISHAH ha-me-go-RE-shet me-no-EF, and he who marries the divorced woman commits adultery).

An idiomatic translation would yield: "Furthermore, he who marries that divorced woman is committing adultery."15

A Further Warning

Based on Luke 16:18, we can suppose that Jesus, like Shammai, holds that adultery is the only grounds for divorce; and therefore, that Jesus views the bill of divorce given by a husband who intends to marry another woman as being invalid from the outset.

Thus, subsequent marriages contracted by the husband or wife are null and void, and any children produced by such marriages are illegitimate.

Since future marriages of such a wife have no validity, anyone who marries her will be entering into an adulterous relationship.16

Should the divorced wife and her second husband learn of the first husband's real motive for divorcing her, they would be obligated to separate immediately.17

The second part of Jesus' saying is not addressed to the man who might marry a wife sinfully divorced-the man would not contract the marriage if he were aware of the true reason for the divorce; rather, it is a strengthening of the warning given in the doublet's first part.

"Realise the far-reaching consequences of your sinful act," Jesus warns the husband contemplating divorce.

"Not only will you yourself commit adultery, you will cause your wife and her second husband to live in adultery."

Through marriage, a man and his wife become one flesh (Mat.

19:4-6).

Should they divorce for reasons other than marital infidelity, any subsequent relationship into which they entered would be adulterous.

New and old

Both parts of Luke 16:18 are exegetical innovations, that is, they are new interpretations of Scripture.

The sages believed that the Torah was a bottomless well: one could dig deeper and deeper, ever gaining new insights inherent in the Torah given to Moses at Sinai.

Jesus spoke of this when he said: "Every scribe trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a landlord who brings out of his storeroom new treasures [i.e., innovative interpretations of his own as well as old [i.e., what he has learned from his teachers!"

(Matthew 13:52).

The first part of Luke 16:18 is an innovation:

Jesus rules that divorcing one's wife in order to marry another is adultery.

This statement goes beyond the formulations that Jesus had heard from his teachers.

His interpretation "establishes or strengthens" the Torah (Mat.

5:17), that is, his innovation reinforces and clarifies the Torah.

The second part of the verse is also an innovation, and more startling18 than the first: the husband who divorces his wife to marry another will not only himself break the seventh of the Ten Commandments, he may cause others to break it.19

Grounds for Divorce

Viewed from a Hebraic and Jewish perspective, Luke 16:18 does not address the question of whether divorce is ever permissible.

Surely Jesus believed that a husband is permitted to divorce his wife if she is engaged in an adulterous relationship.20

Nor does Luke 16:18 deal with the permissibility of remarriage  after divorce.

Jesus probably believed, as did his contemporaries, that both marriage partners, having terminated a marriage with a legally binding bill of divorce, were permitted to remarry.

The church in Corinth wrote to Paul asking for his rulings on several issues relating to marriage.

One of these issues was what a follower of Jesus should do about an unbelieving mate whom he or she had married before becoming a believer.21

Paul's response: "If the unbelieving marriage partner is determined to separate, let him or her do so.

The believing man or woman is not bound in such cases.

God has called us to live lives of peace" 2 Cor.

7:15).

In other words, if the unbelieving spouse cannot live with his or her marriage partner's new beliefs, the believing spouse should not attempt, by legal or other means, to prevent the unbelieving partner from separating.

By "not bound," Paul also means, presumably, that the believing partner is free to remarry.

The sages legislated additional grounds for divorce,22 for example, infertility.