Book Summary: “Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible” by David Instone-Brewer
If I marry a divorcee, will I be committing adultery?
That’s a question I asked myself a lot when dating my wife who had been divorced. If you are wrestling with the topic of divorce and remarriage in the Bible, I feel for you. There are a number of Bible verses on divorce and remarriage, and many of them can be difficult and/or confusing.
That’s why I picked up David Instone-Brewer’s book, Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible: The Social and Literary Context. It’s pretty much the definitive guide to understanding what the Bible says about divorce and remarriage.
Overview
The first 7 chapters of the book take you through history, explaining how God’s people viewed divorce and remarriage throughout the Old Testament and into the New Testament. This gives a lot of crucial context to how God talks about divorce and remarriage throughout the Bible. The author’s goal is to show how these Bible verses would have been understood by its original readers. (This is the part I’ll cover in this article.) The rest of the book includes a lot of other great stuff like: the history of divorce, various interpretations of divorce passages throughout church history, and how the church should handle this topic.
1. The Ancient Near East
In pre-Moses societies, marriage was viewed as a contract. Like any other contract, the marriage covenant was a legally binding contract that could be made and broken—but it outlined the penalties if one party broke it.
Whoever caused the divorce would be financially penalized by losing the dowry money. This setup provided security to the marriage while also protecting the woman.
The Bible describes the relationship between God and Israel as a marriage covenant/contract, which Israel broke. Jerimiah 11:15 says, “What right has my beloved in my house, when she has done vile deeds?”
2. The Pentateuch
One purpose of Moses’s law was to outline how Israel should be different than surrounding cultures. That means wherever the law is silent, it probably aligns with the surrounding cultures.
The biggest way that marriage in Moses’s law differs from surrounding cultures is that it gives more rights to the woman and the divorcee.
The OT doesn’t specify how divorce certificates were worded, so they likely contained the same phrase found in Babylonian marriage documents from 500 BCE: “You are allowed to marry any man you wish.”
Brewer believes that Deuteronomy 24 (a confusing passage about marriage and divorce) is instructing God’s people to provide a divorce certificate that proves a clean break in the marriage. This differs from surrounding cultures, where the man could neglect his wife, then corruptly try to reclaim her for the dowry as soon as she remarried someone else.
3. The Later Prophets
The later prophets describe a metaphor where God is married to Israel, but reluctantly divorces her for her constant unfaithfulness.
It was common in ancient cultures for a god to be described as being married to a certain city.
While God was the one who carried out the divorce, He was forced into it.
After reluctantly divorcing Israel, God marries Judah, who then abandons him. God mercifully separates for a while, hoping to reconcile once Judah and Israel reunite.
Brewer believes that the book of Malachi isn’t criticizing people for getting a divorce, but rather for breaking their marriage vows.
4. Rabbinic Teaching
Early rabbis were in agreement that someone could get divorced for childlessness, material neglect, emotional neglect, or unfaithfulness. (Exodus 21:10–11)
Deuteronomy 24:1 describes a man who divorces his wife for “indecency of a matter.” The traditional group of rabbis (Shamaites) had always interpreted this phrase to mean “adultery,” but a new group (Hillelites) emerged around Jesus’s time who interpreted this phrase to mean “any matter.”
The Hillelites allowed God’s people to get divorced for “any matter”—even for something as trivial as ruining that night’s dinner. This “any matter” divorce grew quickly in popularity.
5. Jesus’s Teaching
The Bible records Jesus’s teachings on divorce in a few places, but Brewer believes that all of them are abbreviated versions of his debates with the Pharisees.
In Matthew 19:3, the Pharisees ask Jesus if it’s lawful for a man to divorce his wife “for any matter.” Based on the cultural context, Brewer believes they were asking Jesus about the well-known Hillelite/Shamaite debate.
When Jesus says that divorce and remarriage are adultery, He’s saying it in the context of the “any matter” debate. Getting a divorce for “any matter” is illegitimate, which is why Jesus’s teachings classify remarriage as adultery.
Jesus said that Moses allowed divorce because of “hardness of heart.” Brewer believes this is talking about the stubbornness of the unfaithful partner to change. He believes both partners should strive to keep their marriage vows and be willing to repeatedly forgive each other upon sincere repentance; divorce is only allowed because of an unfaithful partner’s hardness of heart.
6. Paul’s Teaching
Paul knew about Jesus’s teaching on divorce and agreed with it.
The Corinthians lived under Roman rule, where couples could divorce their partners by sending them out of the home or leaving them. Paul prohibited believers from using this method for divorcing.
Conclusion
In Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible, David Instone-Brewer gives a great overview on the history behind God’s instructions regarding divorce and remarriage. He highlights important context like the Hillelite/Shamaite debate, and suggests that Jesus’s teachings on divorce in remarriage are all in reference to that debate.
I hope you find this book summary helpful on your journey to understand the Bible’s teachings on divorce and remarriage. If you want to go even deeper, I’d really appreciate if you buy the book using one of the links on this page. (Doing so will give me a small commission at no extra cost to you, which helps me maintain this website.)
