"Gender, Divorce and Adultery in the Gospel of Matthew"  Copyright 2002 - all rights reserved.
(Condensed from a chapter of a work in preparation)
James E Miller - Copyright 2002 - all rights reserved.

Most modern readers of the New Testament think of its sexual laws as equal and reciprocal between the two genders. Based on such texts as 1 Cor.7:3-4; Mark 10:11-12; and Luke 16:18, the two genders seem to have comparable sexual rights and responsibilities within the marriage contract. But this is not so in the law of Moses where polygamy is permitted for men but women are limited to one husband at a time. In the law of Moses are laws which govern 
a woman's loss of virginity but not a man's loss of virginity, for indeed  male "virginity" does not seem to be a functional category. Other examples could be cited, and most readers could supply a few examples of their own.  There remains a basic shift between the highly gender-specific sexual and marriage laws of the Mosaic code and the largely reciprocal marriage laws in the New Testament. 

One New Testament work bridges the gap between Mosaic marriage law and New Testament equality in marriage. In the gospel of Matthew the law on divorce is discussed twice, first defining adultery through the woman, then later defining adultery through the man. Together these two passages provide  equality for the two genders under Christian law, but each defines adultery  through the two genders separately in conformity to Jewish law, indeed in 
conformity to the entire Tanakh. This care on the part of the Gospel of  Matthew is shown in other legal issues as well, for Matthew wishes to demonstrate that, "His community is the form of Judaism that fully  understands and enacts the law." (Overman 278) Far from displacing, rewriting or revoking the law, Matthew presents Jesus as the one teacher who 
best understands and upholds the law (Matt 5:17-20).

Matthew 5:31-32
As part of the Sermon on the Mount this prohibition on divorce is one of  the most widely read in the New Testament. However, many modern readers are  mystified by its approach to divorce and remarriage. New converts engaged in 
a Bible study group on the Sermon on the Mount notice in their first reading  that the adultery mentioned in these two verses is defined through the wife only. When they bring up the issue in discussion it is usually brushed off without an answer.

 According to Matthew 5 whoever (masculine) divorces his wife causes her  to commit adultery (no mention of the husband committing adultery), and whoever marries the divorced wife commits adultery because she remains married to her first husband in the divine perspective. In short, the man who divorces his wife is cuckolding himself. Novice Bible readers notice 
that there is no penalty for the husband who remarries. This is in stark contrast to Luke 16:18 and Mark 10:11-12 where the adultery is equal for the two genders. Should either the wife or the husband remarry, the remarried one commits adultery.

Beginner Bible students in a wide variety of conservative churches notice the imbalance in divorce in Matthew 5. However, that imbalance receives almost no notice, and no formal discussion in scholarly commentaries. Not even the massive commentary on the Sermon on the Mount by Betz grapples with this issue. What is at stake in this text?

The prohibition on divorce occurs in the section of the Sermon on the Mount dedicated to the law of Moses, and within this law a man may marry multiple wives. In contrast the wife is restricted to one husband only. Thus when Jesus denies the reality of divorce, this denial alone would not preclude the man from taking another wife under Mosaic law.(1) Basing his 
statements on the law of Moses Jesus emphasizes the husband's complicity in forcing his wife into adultery by divorcing her, and the husband entices another man into adultery by making his divorced wife available for remarriage. Jesus implies that complicity includes the guilt of the offence.  Matthew's gospel eventually does forbid remarriage for the divorced husband, but does so in a separate place for it requires a different legal treatment. In the Mosaic code the laws are gender-specific, and it is no surprise the Matthew, the gospel most careful about issues of Jewish law, would treat the genders separately and prohibit remarriage of the husband separately from remarriage of the wife.

Matthew 19:3-12
In this section of the Gospel of Matthew various issues are brought to Jesus, including the issue of divorce. There are two interesting points in  this treatment of the laws relating to divorce and remarriage. First this text is specific to the divorcing husband. Although some manuscripts include a phrase specific to the wife in verse 9, many commentators assume that this 
is a harmonization with Luke 16:18 and/or Matthew 5 and was not part of the original text. Second, Jesus bypasses the law of Moses to apply a male-specific text on marriage from Genesis 2. In Genesis the text is specific that the man leaves his father and mother to become one flesh with his wife. There is an intrinsic difficulty in leaving one's parents home multiple times to become one flesh with multiple wives. In contrast with chapter 5 where Jesus works within the Mosaic code, in chapter 19 Jesus bases his argument on a text which leaves little room for multiple marriage thereby opposing "divorce" and remarriage.

Jesus also quotes from Genesis 1:27, "male and female he created them," a text which may not seem to specify monogamy in translation. However, this text is used to oppose polygamy in the Damascus Covenant 4.21 (Sanders 257-259; Davies and Allison 10). The Damascus Covenant specifies the wrong of taking a second wife while the first is still alive, citing Genesis 1:27 and 7:9 against polygamy. Genesis 7:9 tells how Noah took animals into the ark in pairs. The Covenant understands Genesis 1:27 as, "a male and a female he created them," i.e. one man and one woman, namely Adam and Eve (so Gaster 
71), and Matthew 19:4 may be translated in the same way. Read this way Genesis 1:27 identifies the ideal marriage as a single pair, just as Genesis 7:9 specifies pairs as the ideal for animals as well. Jesus' citation of Genesis 1:27 joins Genesis 2:24 as a text specific against polygamy. 

One early commentator on this text who understood the monogamy standard of Genesis 1:27 is Athenagoras (Embassy 33.5-6). He quoted Mark 10:11, "whoever puts away his wife and marries another commits adultery," and then paraphrased the text of Mark 10:6 as, "In the beginning God made a single man (hena andra) and a single woman (mian gynaika)." Athenagoras was so opposed to remarriage that he considered remarriage for the bereaved to be adultery. He probably avoided the phrase from Matthew 19:9, "except for fornication," because he wanted no loopholes in his ban on remarriage. 

 For some reason neither Matthew 19 nor Mark 10 include a reference to the paired animals on the ark. But the purpose of the pairs in the Noah story is to explain how reproduction survived the flood. Consistent with a New Testament pattern which avoids linking sexuality and marriage to procreation, these Noah texts are not mentioned in Matthew 19 and Mark 10. 

It is common for commentaries to state that Genesis 1:27 supports the "one flesh" statement of Genesis 2:24 in some unspecified way. Others argue that Genesis 1 implied an androgynous human who was divided into male and 
female, and that these two become one again in marriage (Keener 464 n.10). However this argument has failed to convince many scholars because the androgynous reading of Genesis 1 seems somewhat distant from the thought-world of Matthew. It is far simpler to add the indefinite article in translation, following the example of Athenagoras and Gaster.

A few commentators have noted that the concluding statement (Matthew 19:9) "indirectly condemns" polygamy (Davies and Allison 18). But as most commentaries are far more interested in the porneia clause, they miss the fundamental argument here, that polygamy is contrary to the divinely created order, thus divorce and remarriage are against the divine order.

Also described in Matthew 19 is the reaction of the disciples to this teaching of Jesus. The disciples respond with shock. They exclaim that if this is true it is better not to marry at all. Jesus counsels them about their one alternative -- celibacy, which he describes under the term "eunuch." Some scholars see the eunuch passage as a separate text redacted into this discussion of remarriage (Dewey). Even so, it was placed here for a reason, and in this context eunuch is used as a term for celibacy.

If Jesus had to specify celibacy as the alternative to marriage, this indicates that the disciples assumed other alternatives to marriage. Returning to the law of Moses, remember that this law allowed for mistresses / concubines, and prostitution was also legal, though despised. It seems the disciples assumed they had access to these non-marital sexual outlets. Jesus then carefully ruled out these outlets. 

The consternation of the disciples indicates a bit of wry humor here. The exclamation tells of male fears that they cannot threaten an unruly wife with divorce to keep her in line. Nor can they be rid of her should they not be satisfied. It implies that many marriages are unhappy and a prudent man should not commit himself. Jesus deprives his disciples of their male privilege, and then compounds their anxiety by offering to make eunuchs of them as well. Maybe marriage without the possibility of divorce is not so bad after all. The disciples, it seems, had nothing more to say on the topic.


Notes
1 Keener (189 n. 87) recognizes the problem of polygamy here, but somehow finds in Matthew 5 a rejection of polygamy based on the text in Mark (not its parallel in Luke).

Bibliography

Davies, W. D. and D.C. Allison 
    1997     Matthew, vol. 3, ICC. T&T Clark.

Dewey, Arthur J.
    1992     "The Unkindest Cut of All? Matt 19:11-12" Foundations and Facets Forum 8:113-122.

Gaster, Theodor H.
    1976     The Dead Sea Scriptures, 3rd ed. Doubleday.

Keener, Craig S.
    1999     A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. Eerdmans.

Overman, J. Andrew.
    1996     Church and Community in Crisis. Trinity Press.

Sanders, E.P.
    1985     Jesus and Judaism. Fortress Press.