Now we come to one of the most contentious issues, divorce. We need to look at this in context, both its immediate textual context (ie what Jesus has just said, and is just about to say), and its religious and social context.
There were two main schools of thought on divorce, One took a very strict interpretation. The other an ultra lax approach. Under the teaching of this latter group a man could effectively divorce his wife for burning the toast (I know, he should make his own toast). This is not an exaggeration. So advocates of this second school of thought could find, if they fancied another woman, find some flimsy pretext for divorce and marry the other woman. They would at the same time claim they were within the law.
So Jesus is lambasting these hypocrites.
Laws of the time seemed to be very biased in favour of the man, holding the woman largely responsible for adultery. Here Jesus makes it plain that men are at least as guilty as women.
There is a much larger section on divorce later in Matthew, so I will wait till we get there before saying too much more on divorce and remarriage.
Here Jesus is focusing on heart issues, so I will do so also. You cannot avoid the righteousness of God by inventing rules and spurious justifications for your actions. God sees the heart and knows the evil that resides in there.
On a practical point, it is also worth noting that Jesus has just been talking about hatred and lust, and next will talk about lies. If we dealt with the hatred, lust and lies in our lives then there would be an awful lot less divorce, and an awful lot more happiness.
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