The seventh commandment

7.4 Regulate divorce

Deuteronomy 24.1-4

“‘When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house, and if she goes and becomes another man’s wife, and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies, who took her to be his wife, then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the LORD. And you shall not bring sin upon the land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance.’”

Divorce was provided for under the Law of God, not because this was agreeable to God from the beginning, but because provision must be made for the fallen and sinful state of human beings. The assumption in this case is that the woman had been adulterous, either before her marriage or since. He could thus give her a write of divorce, assuming, of course, procedures for validating the accusation of adultery had been followed. Divorce was not something a man could accomplish on his own, apart from the oversight of the local elders. The accusation of “indecency” had to be proven to the satisfaction of the elders, then the writ of divorce could be issued.

If the woman remarried and her husband died, she could not be married again by her first husband, for this was considered to be an abomination in the sight of the Lord.

The New Testament permits, along with adultery, abandonment as a legitimate ground for divorce (1 Cor. 7). But, again, this is not something an individual should determine. A court of the Church should be involved in determining the justice of the charges.

This series of In the Gates we present a detailed explanation of the Law of God, beginning with the Ten Commandments, and working through the statutes and rules that accompany each commandment. For a practical guide to the role of God’s Law in the practice of ethics, get The Ground for Christian Ethics by going to www.ailbe.org and click on our Book Store.