Deuteronomy 24:1-4 in Its Biblical Contexts

It's always interesting when discussing the divorce and remarriage debate when someone goes back to the Old Testament to prove their case. If the OT law provided a solid basis to know how to proceed on the the matter, one wonders why the NT had to make any comment upon it at all. The Pharisees ask Jesus about it in their attempt to show His discontinuity with the Mosaic Law Code.Those who bring it up use it to show that Jesus has to be agreeing with the law, and therefore, cannot disallow divorce since it is commanded. The fact that Jesus seems to contradict the law leaves the interpreter with only four options.

1. The law commands that one can divorce. Hence, Jesus must be saying something that agrees with the command that one can get a divorce, even though He seems to clearly say something in discontuity with it. This must mean that we've misunderstood Jesus who was agreeing with it all along.

2. The law commands that one can get a divorce. Hence, Jesus contradicts the law and Jesus is wrong.

3. The commands that one can get a divorce, and Jesus now commands otherwise. Hence, He contradicts the law.

I'll argue for the fourth in a moment, but want to look over the other three options and argue that they are unfaithful to the biblical texts in question.

1. It is clear that Jesus is arguing against any kind of divorce or remarriage. The Pharisees understand Him this way, the disciples understand Him this way, Paul understands Him this way, the Church for the first 1500 years understood Him for the most part this way, the statements He makes can really only be understood this way. So it is clear that He does not allow for divorce or remarriage, as discussed many times on this blog in greater detail. So He is not in agreement with the idea. He even says in the text that Moses only permitted it because they were in rebellion against God. He's hardly in agreement with what is in rebellion against God. Hence, no one should go to the law to answer the question.

2. Let's just get out of the way that Jesus was wrong. This is an ethical claim that one needs revelation to decide and the revelation we have presents Jesus as God and presents His teaching as infallible. If it's wrong about Jesus and His teaching then it cannot be known when and how often it's wrong in other things. In essence, if we are to know anything about the right and wrong of marriage and divorce, Jesus cannot be wrong. Hence, no one should go to the law to answer to the question.

3. This is also contradictory toward Matthew. Jesus agrees with the spirit of the law, so would He contradict the spirit of the law if it commanded divorce? This may be easy for a dispensationalist to argue, but it is not a faithful understanding of what is going on. Jesus, in Matthew, agrees with the moral spirit of the law, and hence, He is not contradicting it.

But with what does that leave the interpreter who wishes to be faithful to both texts?

The first thing we need to do is to understand the law within the context of the Mosaic Law Code, and in order to understand that, we must understand the nature of casuistic law. Casuistic law, or "case law," is an application of moral principles or laws to new or unusual sets of circumstances. In the biblical context, it is the application of the creation principle and the concept of justice that flows from it to a particular injustice done toward a person or family. Case law is not moral law. It is law that attempts to bring the most protection to the victim once an injustice has occurred. In other words, it is not teaching what the ultimate moral will of God is, but rather a concession on God's part to punish an unjust action only insofar as the victim is protected from further harm by the unjust act. When a harm has been done, and the only way to protect the victims of further harm is to execute the individual, the law prescribes that. When the criminal can protect the victim through further action on his part, the law will prescribe that. When the criminal can protect the victim through financial reparations, the law will prescribe that. It has nothing to do with the overall morality of the act, or whether God is OK with what the criminal did. In fact, the one doing the injustice is considered a criminal and liable to further act for that very reason. If he or she were not the criminal in God's eyes, he or she would have no obligation to act any further on the victim's behalf.

Hence, when the law says that one who kills another man's slave is to pay him twenty shekels of silver, it doesn't mean God has less value upon the life of a slave. It has nothing to do with whether murder is morally wrong in general. It has nothing to do with whether God is pleased or displeased with the act of killing a slave, and it has nothing to do with whether God will further punish the individual in this life or another for the act. The law only is concerned with economic justice in order to preserve the life of the person or family who lost the slave, and now may be in jeopardy without those extra hands.

Likewise, the law isn't saying that rape is OK when it prescribes for the rapist to marry and take care of the victim for her whole life or pay her father to take care of her. It is simply concerned about the physical well-being of the woman, who's life now is in jeopardy, since being raped in the culture would have lessened her prospects for marriage and financial stability. If she is not well off, and can't get married in this culture, it means she can either become a prostitute or beggar. This is a further injustice that results from the act that is now prevented by the law.
If she already has someone to take care of her, of course, because she has a fiance or husband, the rapist gets the death penalty.

This concept is very important to understand when reading the law concerning the specific issue in Deuteronomy 24:1-4, and the way that the Pharisees, versus the way Jesus read it, were reading it.

The text can be read both ways, and both of those ways need to be understood in light of what is said above. For instance, the NIV has the text read as follows:

If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, and if after she leaves his house she becomes the wife of another man, and her second husband dislikes her and writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, or if he dies, then her first husband, who divorced her, is not allowed to marry her again after she has been defiled. That would be detestable in the eyes of the Lord. Do not bring sin upon the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.

We'll skip over the fact that it translates עֶרְוַת דָּבָר poorly, and incinuates a contradiction between this law and that in 22:13-21 and 23-24. 

The man divorces his wife and gives her a certificate of divorce, another man marries and divorces her (or dies), and the law that is commanded is simply that the first man cannot remarry her. This is said to protect Israel from a corruption that God sees as an abomination. She is said to have been defiled by marrying a second husband, and therefore, cannot go back to her first.
This means that the law is here to protect the land of Israel, the people as a whole, from the corruption of this act. It treats the wife like a prostitute who becomes one flesh with another man because of his divorce of her. Although prostitution is allowed by the law in the case of a woman who is not under a federal head, in that it does not prohibit it in general, God forbids federal heads making their women prostitutes (Lev 19:29; 21:9). Interestingly enough, the law against this in Leviticus 19:29 also mentions that the land would be corrupted because of it. Men who do this to women under their headship are viewed as pimps. Women were not to do it if they were under a federal head (Deut 22:13-21). Hence, a woman made to do this because of divorce was not to be brought back under the federal head who caused it lest the land become a brothel. 

What is interesting, however, is that this is read by the Pharisees and many today as a law that commands that one can get a divorce. This is much like reading the rapist laws as laws that command that one can rape, or the laws concerning the killing of slaves that one can kill slaves. What is being done in the protasis of these laws is seen as evil. It is unjust. It isn't right and it isn't God's will. God's will, now that this evil and injustice has been done, is to preserve further injury to the victim, individually or corporately, by prescribing what will stop this further injury from occurring. 

Notice that this same misunderstanding is stated by the Pharisees, and they are corrected by Jesus.

“Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”

Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not meant to be this way from the beginning. (Matt 19:7-8)

The Pharisees use the word "command," as though the protasis was what Moses was commanding them to do. Jesus corrects this by saying that Moses "permitted" them, not in this law, but by not outlawing divorce and remarriage. In other words, there is no law in the Mosaic Law Code that forbids divorce and remarriage in general, but this is not because God is OK with divorce and remarriage. Saying that this law allows one to get a divorce and remarried is much like saying that the laws concerning rape and murder of a slave allow us to rape and murder. Um, no. They don't.

In Mark, this distinction is made by Jesus trapping them into thinking about whether Moses actually commanded them to do this at all or whether this was not what was being commanded at all. He asks, "What did Moses command you?" (10:3). They admit that he merely permitted it (v. 4), and Jesus even says, knowing what casuistic law is for, that Moses "wrote" them the command in Deuteronomy 24:1-4 because of their stubborness to do wrong in the area and do further harm if their injustice wasn't regulated further. 

In fact, I would like to rename casuistic laws as "damage control laws." Damage has already been done. How does one prevent further damage along creational lines now that wrongs have been committed and chaos unleashed? In no way do these laws permit divorce and remarriage. They simply attempt to regulate these unjust situations from further damage. The great irony, therefore, is the fact that divorce and remarriage appear in the protasis of casuistic law assumes that it is an evil being done against a person, people, or land.

With that understanding, let's return to the fourth option in reconciling what Jesus teaches to this law.

What Jesus teaches is that there is to be no divorce or remarriage among His people. Moses did not prohibit it in the law because of the people's rebellion against God, but it was never the will of God that His people do this, as it is adultery. The spirit of the law in Deuteronomy 24:1-4 is that the land not be defiled with pimping wives out through divorce and remarriage. This means that Jesus' teaching that prohibits divorce and remarriage is absolutely consistent with the spirit of the law. Whereas the law prohibited a specific type of remarriage to keep the land from being defiled, Jesus prohibits all remarriage (and all divorce) in order to keep the land, i.e., church, from becoming defiled. There is simply no contradiction between the two when one understands the point of the first in the context of the Mosaic Law Code. 

The contrast between Moses and Jesus, therefore, is not that Moses commanded one thing and Jesus commanded another, but that Moses did not command against X because casuistic law assumes that people are going to do unjust things to one another, and acts accordingly. Jesus, however, now does teach against divorce and remarriage as a whole in accordance with God's will for marriage revealed at creation. Moses also did not command against polygamy and Jesus' teaching does. Moses also did not command against calling one's brother "brainless," and Jesus does. Jesus is now taking the spirit of the law, the principle of creation, and applying it fully to God's reign over His people in the kingdom. He is not making the concessions of casuistic law, nor is He addressing an issue that only comes up if one sins. Instead, He is arguing what ought to be done from now on, and this is how Christians need to approach the issue.