Sermon on the Mount, Day 15
October 19, 2009 |
Read Matthew 5:31-32 and Matthew 19:1-12 and do the exercises below:
- Find out what you can (in a Bible commentary or on the Internet) about the debate on divorce occurring at that time between the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai. How does this help you understand the passages?
- Concerning this exact passage, Dallas Willard writes, “One of the most important things in the male mind of Jesus’ day, and perhaps every day, was to be able to get rid of a woman who did not please him” (The Divine Conspiracy, 168). Why do you think we tend to read these passages as being restrictive of women today, rather than being liberating or protective of women, as they were intended to be at that time?
- How would you boil down Jesus words? What is the heart of his teaching on marriage and divorce?
- How can Jesus’ teaching on marriage and divorce help us?
Tags: Dallas Willard, Divorce, Exercises, Marriage, Matthew
Categories: Sermon on the Mount
ryanclark said...
1I think Jesus' teaching on divorce is that God hates divorce, so don't do it if you want to live for His kingdom. His teaching on marriage is that you should do whatever draws you closest to God's heart, and if divorce is a possibility it's better not to marry.
10/19/09 5:49 AM | Comment Link
jkshanklin said...
2It feels like Jesus is getting to the heart of the matter, like He always seems to with His Jesusy wisdom. I love how He is able to cut to the chase. It feels like the heart of the issue isn't divorce, it's really marriage. The Matthew 19 passage ends with Jesus saying that marriage is not something to be taken lightly. (I love the disciples response!) Jesus tackles the issue of divorce by focusing on marriage. I think it is helpful to us in that it should serve as a reminder to us to take the act of getting married way more seriously than we do as a culture, especially the church culture. The way to lower the divorce rate isn't to get in the pulpit and talk about how bad divorce is, it is to put an emphasis on how important the committment of marriage is – help create a clearer picture of the difficulty and challenges of it, provide wise counsel ahead of marriage, take more seriously, as a culture, the committment that marriage is really asking us to make.
10/19/09 5:54 AM | Comment Link
Ben Sternke said...
3Good thoughts, Ryan and Josh. I'd also love to hear some comments on the first two questions… about how the “divorce debates” at the time color how we perceive Jesus's answer.
It's SO easy to read a passage like the Sermon on the Mount and think it's intended to be “timeless truths” that sort of float out there in space and forget that very often Jesus was directly addressing debates and issues of his own day. Thus we see “divorce” and we think of no-fault divorce where two people go their separate ways and both are likely to be able to find work, meet new people, etc. But before we can understand what Jesus was talking about we have to know what “divorce” actually was in first century Palestine, how it was commonly practiced, how different it was to today's “divorce.”
Anyone look up Shammai and Hillel? What kinds of divorce were being practiced back then?
10/19/09 6:50 AM | Comment Link
wesgaines said...
4The fact that there is a wikipedia page devoted to the Hillel v. Shammai feud (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillel_and_Shammai) is proof that wikipedia has maxed out its capacity. I think the Pharisees again are looking only at the external trying to get Jesus to take sides (Who's side are you on!) and Jesus again points to the inside saying the only reason you want your right to divorce is because of the hardness of your heart.
10/19/09 12:10 PM | Comment Link
debsternke said...
5Some of the reasons for divorce that I found were childlessness, (divorce was actually expected if the couple had no children after 10 years.) marital neglect, emotional neglect and unfaithfulness.
Then there were strange ones, like if the husband had an occupation that made him smell bad or if he repulsed her.
Only husbands could enact a divorce, but women could initiate one. She would have to show the courts that there were sufficient grounds for divorce and then they would persuade the man to divorce her.
This book had some interesting info on google books: Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible: the social and literary context
By David Instone-Brewer
It's amazing to me how different their culture was in regards to marriage.
10/19/09 8:05 PM | Comment Link
Mervin said...
6From the commentaries that I read, the House of Hillel permitted divorce for any cause; the man simply declared in writing that he was divorcing his wife and did not even have to give a reason. The House of Shammai permitted divorce only for the reason of adultery. Jesus definitely condemns the first practice, which treats the woman as no more than a commodity that can be abandoned at will. That's quite a contrast from the mutual respect that Paul advocates in Ephesians.
10/19/09 8:17 PM | Comment Link