Irasburg
All Pharisees agreed that this Old Testament passage permitted divorce, that only the husband could initiate it, and that divorce implied the right to remarry. But they disagreed on the grounds of divorce. The strict view of Rabbi Shammai allowed divorce only if a wife were guilty of immorality; the lenient view of Rabbi Hillel allowed a husband to divorce his wife for almost any reason
The fact that the question was asked in Perea, part of the territory of Herod Antipas, may be significant
Moses did not command or encourage divorce. He merely permitted it.
According to Jewish law, a wife could commit adultery against her husband by having relations with another man; and a man, whether or not married, could commit adultery against another man by having relations with that man’s wife. But a husband could not commit adultery against his own wife by being unfaithful to her. By insisting that a husband could commit adultery against his own wife, Jesus greatly elevated the status of wives and women in general.
That is, first-century Jews would supply the phrase “for any matter” into the question, which had been omitted for convenience, but apart from which the question made no sense
The Pharisees reflect the view that marriage is a disposable contractual arrangement
It is, in other words, a text of concession, not a text of intention
You do not learn to fly an airplane by following the instructions for making a crash landing; you will not be successful in war if you train by the rules for beating a retreat
In this pronouncement Jesus again presumes a divine authority resident in himself, for he does not deduce a conclusion from Scripture (as do the scribes), but he declares the will of God as set forth in a creation text over against a legal text from Moses.
In the Torah the commandment to honor one’s parents is one of the Ten Commandments of God and second only to the commandment to honor God (Exod 20:12). But the effect of v. 7 is to declare that a husband’s allegiance to his wife in the union of marriage surpasses his allegiance to father and mother, making marriage second only to obedience to God in sacredness.