What Does the Bible Actually Teach About Divorce?
The subject of divorce remains one of the most debated ethical issues within Christianity. Much of the disagreement arises from Matthew 19, particularly the so-called “exception clause.” However, one of the greatest interpretive mistakes is reading this passage in isolation rather than within its immediate literary context. Before examining the exception clause, it is essential to understand the broader discussion in which Christ’s teaching on divorce occurs.
When the Pharisees questioned Jesus regarding divorce, they asked:
“The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” (Matthew 19:3–6)
There is nothing particularly controversial in Christ’s initial response. He simply appeals to God’s original design for marriage as revealed in Genesis. From the beginning, marriage was intended to unite one man and one woman into a single fleshly union. Significantly, Jesus emphasizes that it is God who joins husband and wife together, whereas it is man who attempts to separate what God has united. The force of Christ’s statement is unmistakable: human beings possess no divine authority to dissolve a union established by God. His opening declaration is therefore an unequivocal affirmation of the permanence of marriage and a rejection of divorce as contrary to God’s original intention.
The Pharisees immediately responded by appealing to the Mosaic legislation:
“They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.” (Matthew 19:7–8)
Their objection is understandable. If God opposes divorce, why did Moses permit it? Since Moses occupied the highest prophetic authority within Judaism, the Pharisees assumed that the Mosaic provision constituted divine approval of divorce.
Jesus’ response, however, redirects the issue away from Moses and toward the sinful condition of humanity. Moses did not institute divorce because it reflected God’s ideal for marriage. Rather, he permitted it because of the hardness of the people’s hearts. Divorce, therefore, is presented not as a divine endorsement but as a concession to human sinfulness. Christ explicitly contrasts this concession with God’s original design, declaring, “from the beginning it was not so.”
This statement prepares the reader for the well-known “exception clause” that follows in Matthew 19:9. Before examining that difficult passage, however, it is necessary to consider the broader literary context of Matthew 18–19. Only when Christ’s teaching on divorce is interpreted within its surrounding discussion of church discipline, repentance, and forgiveness can His words be properly understood.
The Context of Matthew 19: Church Discipline and Unlimited Forgiveness
Before examining Christ’s statement regarding divorce in Matthew 19, it is essential to consider the immediate context in which this discussion occurs. The conversation does not begin in chapter 19 but in Matthew 18, where Jesus instructs His disciples concerning church discipline, repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation. These themes provide the interpretive framework for understanding His teaching on marriage.
In Matthew 18:15–20, Jesus outlines the biblical process of church discipline. If a believer sins against another, the matter is first to be addressed privately. Should the offending party refuse to listen, one or two additional witnesses are to accompany the injured party. If repentance is still refused, the matter is to be brought before the church. Finally, if the offender rejects the judgment of the church, he is to be regarded “as an heathen man and a publican”—that is, he is to be excluded from the fellowship of the believing community because of his persistent refusal to repent.
Christ summarizes the authority behind this judicial process by saying:
“Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Matthew 18:18–20)
The expressions “binding” and “loosing” in verse 18 refer to the judicial authority exercised during these disciplinary proceedings. Alfred Edersheim explains:
“On the other hand, ‘binding and loosing’ referred simply to things or acts prohibiting or else permitting them, declaring them lawful or unlawful.”1)Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Macdonald Publishing Co. (Mclean, VA: 1883, 1886), Vol. 2, p. 85.
The Greek verb tenses in Matthew 18:18 further indicate that the judgment has already been established in heaven before it is affirmed on earth. The church does not create heavenly judgments; rather, it recognizes and confirms the judgment already determined by God. In this sense, the earthly judges serve as representatives who carry out the divine will.
This concept is deeply rooted in the Old Testament. Deuteronomy 1:16–17 teaches that righteous judgment ultimately belongs to God, while Numbers 11:24–25 records the seventy elders receiving divine authority to assist Moses in judging the nation. The New Testament likewise presents church leaders as exercising delegated authority under Christ (Acts 1:2; 2 Corinthians 13:1–3). Consequently, the “two” who agree in Matthew 18:19 naturally correspond to the two witnesses mentioned in verse 16.
This judicial context is also significant for the discussion of divorce in the following chapter. The Mishnah (Sotah 1.1),2)The Mishna (Trans. Herbert Danby), Hendrickson Pub. (Peabody, MA: 1933, 2016), p. 293. commenting on Numbers 5:11–31, describes the procedure whereby a husband who suspected his wife of adultery was first to warn her before two witnesses prior to bringing the matter before the proper authorities. Thus, the legal framework established in Matthew 18 provides an important backdrop for Christ’s subsequent teaching in Matthew 19.
Unfortunately, Matthew 18:20 is frequently quoted apart from its context:
“For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Matthew 18:20)
This verse is commonly applied to prayer meetings or small worship gatherings. However, within its immediate context, Christ is speaking specifically of church discipline. The “two or three” are those participating in the judicial process of determining whether an unrepentant believer is to remain within the fellowship of the church or be removed from it. The principle finds a parallel in Paul’s instructions concerning church discipline in 1 Corinthians 5:11–13.
Christ’s promise is that He Himself is present in the midst of these proceedings. Just as 2 Chronicles 19:6 reminds Israel’s judges that God is present in their judgments, Matthew 28:20 assures Christ’s continuing presence with His church. The church’s disciplinary decisions, when carried out according to God’s revealed will, therefore represent Christ’s own judicial authority.
This observation is especially significant for the discussion of marriage in Matthew 19. In church discipline, the separation of an unrepentant sinner from the congregation occurs only under divine authority. Likewise, when Christ later declares that God joins husband and wife into one flesh, He emphasizes that human beings possess no authority to separate what God Himself has united. In both passages, divine authority—not human preference—governs matters of separation.
It should also be remembered that the purpose of church discipline is never merely punitive but restorative. Its ultimate objective is repentance and reconciliation. The immoral man condemned in 1 Corinthians 5 appears to have repented, as implied by Paul’s subsequent instructions in 2 Corinthians regarding restoration. Excommunication occurs only when genuine repentance is absent. Persistent hardness of heart demonstrates that the individual has not experienced true conversion, making separation from the church both necessary and appropriate.
Immediately after explaining church discipline, Peter asks Jesus how often he should forgive someone who sins against him. Christ responds:
“I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.” (Matthew 18:22)
Jesus is not establishing a numerical limit of 490 acts of forgiveness. Rather, He teaches that forgiveness is to be continual and without calculation. To illustrate this principle, He immediately relates the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant (Matthew 18:23–35).
In the parable, a servant owes his king ten thousand talents—an unimaginably large debt. A talent was a unit of weight whose precise value varied throughout the ancient world, but a single talent represented approximately 6,000 days’ wages for an ordinary laborer. Thus, one talent equaled roughly sixteen to twenty years of labor. The exact monetary value cannot be calculated with certainty because it depended upon the metal involved and the historical setting, but the debt clearly represents an amount impossible for any individual to repay.
Josephus illustrates the enormous value of a talent by recording that Archelaus, who succeeded Herod the Great over Judea, Samaria, and Idumea, received only six hundred talents annually in tribute (Antiquities of the Jews, 17.320).3)Josephus, Antiquities 17.320 [17.11.4]. The New Complete Works of Josephus (Revised and Expanded) (Trans. William Whiston, Introduction and Commentary by Paul L. Maier), Kregel Publications (Grand Rapids, MI: 1999), p. 581. The point of Jesus’ parable is therefore not the precise monetary equivalent but the utter impossibility of repaying such a debt within a lifetime.
The king initially orders that the servant, his wife, and his children be sold into slavery. This detail suggests that the king is not Jewish, since Jewish law did not permit women to be sold for restitution (Mishnah, Sotah 3.8).4)The Mishna (Trans. Herbert Danby), Hendrickson Pub. (Peabody, MA: 1933, 2016), p. 297. Moreover, unlike Israel’s legislation concerning the Jubilee, this pagan ruler offers no prospect of eventual release. Even so, selling the family into slavery would recover only a tiny fraction of the debt.
Yet when the servant pleads for mercy,
“Then the lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt.” (Matthew 18:27)
The contrast that follows is striking. The servant who has just received immeasurable forgiveness immediately finds a fellow servant who owes him only one hundred denarii—approximately one hundred days’ wages, a debt that could realistically be repaid within a matter of months. Instead of extending the same mercy he had received, he violently seizes his fellow servant by the throat, demands immediate payment, and has him imprisoned.
When the king learns of this hypocrisy, he declares:
“Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee? And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him.” (Matthew 18:33–34)
Christ concludes the parable with its application:
“So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.” (Matthew 18:35)
This brings the reader directly into Matthew 19. The discussion of divorce does not arise independently but follows immediately after Christ’s teaching on church discipline and unlimited forgiveness. The literary flow is significant. If marriage joins two people into one flesh, then forgiveness should characterize that relationship continually throughout life. Forgiveness is not limited to seven offenses, nor even to “seventy times seven.” Rather, it is to be extended continually, just as God continually forgives His people.
Paul expresses the same principle:
“And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” (Ephesians 4:32)
When Jesus attributes divorce to the hardness of human hearts (Matthew 19:8), He is describing hearts that refuse to practice this kind of forgiveness. The unforgiving spouse resembles the servant who refused to forgive his fellow servant an insignificant debt after having himself received immeasurable mercy. The king’s rebuke therefore becomes directly applicable to marriage: “Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee?”
Seen within its literary context, Christ is not relaxing God’s standard for marriage but reinforcing it with remarkable severity. Divorce is presented as the fruit of an unforgiving and hardened heart. Such hardness reveals a failure to comprehend the grace of God. Accordingly, the imagery of being delivered to the tormentors points not to the loss of salvation but to the judgment awaiting those whose lives demonstrate that they have never truly experienced the transforming forgiveness of God in the first place.
The Meaning of the Exception Clause
The central question remains: What is the meaning of the so-called exception clause? Jesus states:
“He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.” (Matthew 19:8–9)
Before examining the phrase “except it be for fornication”, it is important to recall Christ’s explanation for why divorce was permitted under Moses. Divorce was suffered—that is, allowed—not because it reflected God’s ideal, but because of the people’s hardness of heart. This raises an important biblical question: What does Scripture say about those whose hearts were hardened during the wilderness wanderings?
“While it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation. For some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses. But with whom was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell in the wilderness? And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.” (Hebrews 3:15–19)
Hebrews explicitly connects hard hearts with unbelief. Those who perished in the wilderness were excluded from God’s rest because they did not believe. Jude makes the same point:
“I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not.” (Jude 5)
Thus, Scripture consistently associates hardness of heart with unbelief. If divorce is attributed to hardness of heart, as Jesus states, then the issue extends beyond marital conflict and points to a deeper spiritual problem involving an unwillingness to extend forgiveness and demonstrate the grace that God Himself shows to sinners.
A more pressing question concerns adultery. Does Jesus permit divorce when adultery has occurred? Matthew 19:9 states:
“And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.” (Matthew 19:9)
The phrase “put away” clearly refers to divorce. Equally significant is Christ’s statement that marrying a divorced person constitutes adultery. The reason, according to this interpretation, is that God does not recognize human divorce as dissolving the marriage bond. Marriage remains binding until death.
Paul states this principle explicitly:
“For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man.” (Romans 7:2–3)
According to this interpretation, remarriage following divorce constitutes adultery because the original marriage covenant remains intact before God. Death alone dissolves the marital bond.
Yet why does Matthew include the phrase “except it be for fornication”? Jesus had already addressed this subject in the Sermon on the Mount:
“It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement: But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.” (Matthew 5:31–32)
Some interpret this statement as granting permission for divorce in cases of adultery. However, this understanding raises difficulties within the immediate context. Only a few verses earlier, Jesus had expanded the definition of adultery to include lustful intent (Matthew 5:27–28). If adultery automatically authorized divorce, then virtually any instance of lust could become grounds for dissolving a marriage. Such a conclusion appears inconsistent with Jesus’ broader emphasis on the sanctity and permanence of marriage.
Furthermore, under the Mosaic Law the prescribed penalty for adultery was not divorce but death (Leviticus 20:10). The account of the woman caught in adultery in John 8 demonstrates that first-century Jews understood adultery as a capital offense. Therefore, adultery itself did not create a biblical category of divorce under the Old Testament legal framework.
A closer reading of Matthew 5:32 suggests another possibility:
“But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.”
The focus of the statement is the guilt of the husband who initiates the divorce. By divorcing his wife, he becomes responsible for causing her to enter an adulterous condition should she remarry. The exception does not necessarily grant permission for divorce; rather, it identifies a circumstance in which the husband is not the one causing the adultery, since the wife has already committed it herself. Even in this reading, the text does not explicitly command or endorse divorce.
Indeed, nowhere does Scripture command a believer to divorce an adulterous spouse. Instead, examples such as Hosea present a striking picture of forgiveness and restoration. Hosea’s wife committed repeated acts of unfaithfulness and bore children associated with her adulterous conduct. Yet Hosea was instructed by God to redeem and restore her (Hosea 3), illustrating God’s covenant faithfulness toward Israel despite her spiritual adultery.
he understanding that Jesus fundamentally prohibited divorce finds support among several scholars.
F. F. Bruce writes:
“Jesus does not idealise marriage. He does not say that every marriage is made in heaven; he says that Mariage itself is made in heaven—that is, instituted by God. To the question, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?’ his answer, in effect, is ‘No; not for any cause.’”5)F. F. Bruce, Hard Sayings of Jesus, Intervarsity Press (Downers Grove, IL: 1983), p. 58
Similarly, Joachim Jeremias observes:
“What was more, Jesus’ attitude to the subject of marriage was an entirely new one. He was not content to stand up for monogamy; he completely forbade divorce when talking to his disciples (Matt. 19.6), and unhesitatingly and fearlessly criticized the Torah for permitting divorce because of the hardness of human hearts (Matt. 19.8). Marriage to him was indissoluble to the extent of seeing the remarriage of divorced persons, whether men or women (Matt. 5.32; 19.9; Mark 10.11-12; Luke 16.18), as adultery because the first marriage still stands. By this estimation of marriage, and this unexampled sanctification of it, Jesus puts into practice the scriptural saying that marriage is an ordinance created by God (Gen. 1.27; 2.24; Mark 10.6-7).”6)Joachim Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus, Fortress Press (Philadelphia, PA: 1969), p. 376
Conclusion
According to this interpretation, the exception clause does not function as permission to divorce because of adultery. Rather, it identifies the circumstances surrounding guilt while maintaining Christ’s overarching condemnation of divorce itself. Throughout Matthew 18 and 19, Jesus emphasizes forgiveness, condemns hardness of heart, and reaffirms God’s original design for marriage as a lifelong union.
Malachi declares that God hates divorce (Malachi 2:14–16), and the New Testament presents marriage as a picture of Christ’s relationship with His church (Ephesians 5:31–32; 2 Corinthians 11:2). Because Christ remains faithful to His bride, marriage serves as a covenantal illustration of that enduring faithfulness.
Consequently, Jesus’ teaching portrays marriage as an indissoluble union established by God, sustained through forgiveness, and intended to endure for life. Within this framework, the permanence of marriage becomes not only a moral command but also a profound theological picture of the eternal security believers possess in their relationship with Christ.
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