Jesus, Divorce, and Remarriage

In Their Historical Setting

Gordon J. Wenham

• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781683593294
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Études bibliques

What did Jesus really say about divorce and remarriage? Challenging the evangelical near-consensus that Jesus permitted divorce and remarriage in certain circumstances, Gordon Wenham argues that while Jesus permitted separation in cases of sexual immorality, he did not permit divorce and remarriage.Presenting a revisitation and expansion of several decades of thought and debate on the topic, Wenham builds his case from a close reading of Jesus' teaching in the Gospels, showing how his teaching pushed against the culture of his day. In addition, Wenham brings in insights from ancient Near Eastern marriage laws, the Old Testament, the writings of Paul, and the earliest Christian interpreters of the Gospel divorce texts.Readers will be challenged by a careful biblical argument that provides a counterpoint to the majority view. No study on divorce and remarriage will be complete without considering Jesus, Divorce, and Remarriage.

1

THE WORLD OF THE BIBLE

At first blush, it is curious to begin a book on the teaching of Jesus by looking at the social customs of societies that were neither biblical nor contemporary with him. Yet this is what I propose to do. This is because these ancient societies were much closer to the biblical pattern of life than ours is. Also, their basic social structures survived at least into the first millennium BC and, in slightly modified form, into the Christian era. So when we try to understand the Gospels and find gaps in our knowledge, we shall be on much safer ground if we fill these gaps by appealing to ancient custom than by filling them by guesswork based on modern practice.

There are many ways in which traditional societies differ from modern society.1 There are the obvious technological revolutions, such as advances in agriculture, medicine, transport, and electronics that have transformed life for many people. But it is not computers, TV, motor vehicles, and aircraft that have changed daily life most fundamentally so much as the way modern society is structured. To put it over-simply: in traditional societies (this would also apply to many modern-day Eastern cultures), the community is fundamental, whereas in Western society the individual is all-important. Your place in modern society is determined by your education, innate ability, and job opportunities, but in traditional society, it is birth that determines where you live and your occupation. For example, you could become a priest in Jerusalem because your father was a priest and his father was a priest before him. But if you were not the son of a priest, you could never become one. Quite different are the criteria for becoming a Christian minister: after an assessment of your suitability for the role, you become a Christian pastor or priest through training at seminary and then by working with an older minister. In Britain, the royal family is one of the few relics of traditional social organization that survives. You cannot become king of England by taking a degree in royalty studies! You must be the queen’s son.

These different social structures have an important effect on the approach to marriage. In traditional societies, marriage involves the union of two tribes or families, whereas in today’s society it is seen essentially as a link-up of two individuals: the implications of their alliance for society as a whole tend to be regarded as of little importance. These different attitudes to society and marriage customs must be borne in mind throughout the following review of marriage and divorce down through the centuries. From the Patriarchs in the early second millennium BC to the Jews in the first century AD, the fundamental assumptions about family were very different from ours. This is why this study begins with a look at the non-biblical setting of ancient matrimony.

MARRIAGE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

For our purposes, the best sources of information are texts from the Old Babylonian period, roughly 2000 to 1600 BC, when the first dynasty of Babylon was the dominant power in the ancient Near East. The most famous king of this dynasty was Hammurabi (1792–1750). We have two law codes from this era (the Code of Hammurabi, c. 1750 BC; and the Code of Eshnunna, c. 1770 BC), which show how the Babylonians sought to structure society.2 We also have thousands of legal texts, including ninety marriage documents describing how they did in fact operate.3 I shall therefore draw heavily on Old Babylonian texts to develop a picture of ancient Near Eastern marriage.4

Biblical narratives are another rich source. One of the most informative passages about the preliminaries to marriage is found in Genesis 24, which tells how Abraham’s servant was sent by Abraham to find a wife for his son Isaac.

In biblical times, marriages were frequently arranged for the bride and groom by their parents. Genesis 24 tells how the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah was organized without the couple even meeting, nor were the parents of Isaac and Rebekah directly involved. Abraham’s servant did the negotiations on his master’s behalf. That such a marriage was divinely approved is grudgingly admitted by Laban and Bethuel, who say, “The thing has come from the LORD” (Gen 24:50). Isaac did not say or do anything until Rebekah arrived at Abraham’s camp. Rebekah’s opinion was not sought until all the negotiations had been completed and the servant was ready to return to Abraham.

The fullness of this account shows its importance and suggests the story was probably used to inculcate the virtue of arranged marriage. It certainly shows how marriage was viewed not as a private arrangement between two individuals but as something that involved the extended family and potentially the larger clan. The substance of the negotiations is only alluded to in Genesis, and it is here that the Old Babylonian texts are so helpful. From them we learn that a payment was made to mark the agreement to marry. This sum of money, best called the bride-money, was given by the groom’s family to the bride’s family. Because it looked as though the groom was buying the bride, the bride-money has sometimes been called the bride price. But this is not accurate. What the bride-money did was transfer authority over the bride from her parents to the groom’s family.5 In Old Babylonian times, the bride-money varied between one and forty shekels, a substantial sum when a laborer was paid a shekel a month.6 This payment effected betrothal or, more precisely, inchoate marriage, for the bride was now regarded as her husband’s wife. Although she still lived in her father’s house, any intercourse with her by a third party counted as adultery.7 The same rule applied in the land of Israel some centuries later (Deut 22:23–26).

The payment of bride-money was a pledge that both parties would fulfill all the regular procedures to complete the marriage union. If the bride’s family subsequently pulled out of the commitment, they forfeited the bride-money given to them by the groom’s father. If it was the groom’s family that reneged on the agreement, they forfeited the bride-money plus an equal sum. Thus the penalty for withdrawal from the match was the same for both parties. Given the size of the bride-money, there was a strong incentive to go through with the marriage. Its payment signaled that the bride’s parents were relinquishing their authority over her and were ready to allow her to move from their home to the groom’s abode. This move was the central part of the wedding ceremony, but there were, of course, many other customary acts, notably a wedding breakfast lasting several days, a recital of the wedding contract, and probably an exchange of pledges along the lines of: “You, X, are now my wife.” To which the bride replied: “You, Y, are now my husband.” It was probably at this time that the dowry was given to the bride. The dowry was a gift to the bride from her father.8

There were doubtless many other customs that the ancients were familiar with but had no need to specify because they were taken for granted. But the giving of the dowry was very important and is often detailed in wedding contracts. Essentially, the dowry was a large present from the bride’s father to the bride. Typically, it contained clothing, jewelry, kitchen utensils, furniture, and sometimes slaves, livestock, and land, but not money.9 Though legally the dowry belonged to the bride, in practice it was managed by the husband. However, if the marriage was terminated by death or divorce, its ownership by the wife became very significant since the dowry acted as an endowment if the wife was widowed and as a divorce settlement if she was divorced.10 For this reason, the dowry’s content was carefully recorded as it had to be preserved intact in case the widowed or divorced wife needed to take it with her.

DIVORCE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

As already mentioned, the dowry played an important role in divorce. The fate of the dowry in divorce proceedings depended on the reason for the divorce. If the wife was innocent of any unfaithfulness and had borne some children for her husband, she retained the dowry in full, in fact in its original condition. Her husband had to make good for any wear and tear. In addition, she might receive a divorce payment. If, on the other hand, she was guilty of some marital offense short of adultery, her husband could withhold some or all of the dowry, depending on the nature of the offense.

In principle, it was quite easy for a man to divorce his wife. All he had to do was to say “you are not my wife” in the presence of his wife and some witnesses. Divorce was an essentially private procedure. No appearance in court was required for the divorce itself,11 though it might be required if there were disputes about property.

Thus the divorce ceremony was quite simple and could be invoked for any reason,12 but this did not mean that divorces were frequent. This was due to the heavy costs involved in many situations, which would deter couples from resorting to divorce. For example, if a man divorced his childless wife without good reason, he must give her a sum equal to the bride-money and refund her dowry. If she was married without payment of the bride-money, he must pay sixty shekels and refund her dowry.13 But if his wife had borne him children and he took another wife, he would forfeit his house and all his property.14 If, however, the wife had misbehaved, her husband could divorce her without cost. If she and her lover were caught in the act of adultery, they could be put to death. If the aggrieved husband wished to spare his wife, her lover must be spared too.15 In this case and other serious offenses, the wife could be divorced without any compensation or refund of her dowry.16

It has been argued that a wife had no right to divorce her husband, but this has been refuted by Raymond Westbrook.17 As with the husband, it seems likely that a wife could initiate a divorce by saying something similar to “You are not my husband.” However, divorce was not to be undertaken lightly by a woman, for there were heavy penalties for invoking that right without strong evidence of her husband’s misconduct. A would-be divorcee seeking a divorce without good grounds could face the death penalty by drowning or by being thrown from a tower (defenestration), or she could face heavy financial penalties.

The general picture that emerges from these Old Babylonian texts is that marriage was taken very seriously since it represents the union of two families. The heads of the family have more say in arranging the match than the couple involved. This is partly a consequence of the couple’s ages: they would mostly be teenagers just past puberty. It was also necessitated by the large financial payments associated with marriage and divorce, such as the dowry and bride-money. In modern terms, these represented large capital transfers between the families involved. Divorce, as I have said, was quite a simple procedure, merely requiring the utterance, “You are not my wife/husband,” but the costs involved must have been a strong deterrent to seeking divorce unless there were very good grounds.18

POLYGAMY IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

Some of the Old Babylonian marriage contracts mention the possibility of the husband taking a second wife. These documents seek to regulate relations between the two wives and between the wives and the husband. Various situations are envisaged. The wives may be sisters and their father decided to marry them both off to the same man. Or the first wife may have had a slave-girl as part of her dowry so that when the woman married, the slave-girl became the man’s second wife. At the same time, she remained the property of the first wife.

Another reason for polygamy was childlessness, seen as a disaster in the ancient world. Both affection for his first wife and the cost of divorce could prompt a husband not to divorce her but to take a second wife in the hope of acquiring an heir. A further motive for taking a second wife was incurable sickness in the first wife. Yet another reason would be to punish a first wife for misconduct short of adultery. She could be divorced without compensation or she could be reduced to the status of slave wife in her husband’s home.

Whatever the reason for taking a second wife, there were doubtless plenty of complications. Nevertheless, the high cost of divorce, with its requirement of returning the dowry if the first wife had not misbehaved, probably limited the number of marriages in which the husband took a second wife.

SUMMARY

This review of marriage law and custom in the Old Babylonian era has disclosed a very different approach to these issues from modern Western social attitudes and customs. Of course, quite similar attitudes to marriage survive in traditional societies today. But in our society, relations between the sexes have become quite fluid and individualistic. Many couples live together without even a wedding ceremony, let alone obtaining their parents’ agreement to the union. The decision to marry or to live together is seen to be the concern of the individuals involved; other people’s opinion does not really matter.

The high value attached to marriage in traditional society had as its counterpart the horror of singleness. To be single implied that one would be childless in later life, and this for a woman was tragic (see Rachel, Hannah, and Elizabeth in Gen 30:1; 1 Sam 1:2–11; Luke 1:7). Without children, you would have no one to care for you in old age or to tend your grave. For similar reasons, the plight of eunuchs who did not or could not marry and father children was regarded as pitiable and to be avoided at all costs (Isa 56:3–5). To lose one’s ability to become a parent was seen as catastrophic, but singleness attracted little sympathy, and in the case of divorce imposed for adultery it was doubtless treated with scorn. By contrast, in modern society—and indeed in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians—the single life is not regarded as necessarily inferior to marriage.

Similarly, divorce in the modern West is seen as essentially the concern of the couple: the implications of the break-up for the children, if there are any, and relatives and friends of the divorcing couple are seen as relatively unimportant. In Western society, the insignificance of divorce compared with other rites of passage, ...