Book Review of Craig Keener’s
“… AND MARRIES ANOTHER”
By David Hillary
david.hillary@gmail.com
The Quest for the Cultural Background
Keener’s book first published in 1991 (Sixth Printing March 2007 reviewed) features two key themes:
an emphasis on “cultural background” (p. viii) and a charge against “those who would judge or
penalize the innocent party” to a divorce (p. xii).
According to Keener, reading the Lord’s sayings correctly “involves understanding the figures of
speech, the literary and cultural allusions, and the issues which Jesus was originally addressing” (p.
13). Keener’s key technique is to attempt to correctly read the immediately preceding paragraphs of
Mat. 5:21-30 as an example of how to do this to shed light on the divorce and remarriage sayings that
follow in Mat. 5:31-32.
The thrust of the argument is that the Sermon contains hyperbolic language and wise sayings which
are exaggerated generalisations, and so the Lord’s divorce sayings should be treated in like manner as
generalisations glossing over multiple exceptions permissive of divorce and subsequent remarriage
while the former spouse still lives. The exemptions are innominate, with those for “immorality” and
“desertion” merely examples of cases where Keener rules that it would be “oppressive” to require a
spouse – labelled by Keener the “innocent” spouse – to continue to be bound to the contract or
restricted from marrying someone else.
In this review we will demonstrate that this is the wrong approach and the wrong conclusion. The
correct appreciation of the cultural background – including legal and political background – requires a
different approach to the Sermon and to its sayings against divorce and remarriage. Keener’s failings
mean that he is least in the Kingdom of Heaven, as he relaxes the Lord’s commands and teaches others
to do likewise (Mat. 5:19).
Antitheses against what?
Keener’s wrong approach starts with his mischaracterisation of the statements that the Lord gives and
then responds to with his own teaching in the six antitheses of the Sermon.
Keener’s approach construes the antitheses as contrasting the Lord’s sayings with what he claims are
simply “quotes from the Old Testament” (p. 13). The sayings that the Lord cites are obviously not
simply “quotes from the Old Testament” which never says ‘whoever kills will be liable to judgement’
nor ‘hate your enemy.’ Importantly for us, the Old Testament does not say ‘Whoever divorces his wife,
let him give her a certificate of divorce’ either.
Although he attempts to soften the implication of this by stating that “Jesus was not opposed to the
Bible itself” (p. 13) and although he states that the Lord “is going to interpret, not refute the Law of
God” (p. 13) he pays no attention to any of the actual statements that he quotes generally as
contrasting with his own teaching.
The six statements the Lord addresses defy neat characterisation. The most sensible approach is that
the Lord is using them to bring up issues to address. He did so either by quoting sections of the Torah
or quoting statements of interpretation or application from contemporary Torah teachers. The use of
the six statements addressed are summarised and contrasted below:
Statement
Use
‘You shall not kill; and The first part is a direct quote from the Torah, the second part is
whoever kills will be liable to not. Based on what follows, and contra Keener, the Lord quotes this
judgement.’
statement to raise the issues of:
•
killing,
•
judgement for killing (death – or not),
•
judgement of money damages and judgement of death,
not for killing but for offending the powerful people with
words.
‘You
shall
adultery.’
not
commit This is a direct quote from the Torah. Based on what follows this is
quoted to discuss the command and to present some of the Lord’s
interpretations and applications on it.
Statement
Use
‘Whoever divorces his wife, This is a misquote and a misapplication of Deut. 24:1-4, apparently
let him give her a certificate from some of the Lord’s contemporaries. The Lord uses it to
of divorce.’
address the misapplication and misuse of the law by his
contemporaries and to teach against post-wedding divorce. This is
a continuation of the teaching on the Torah’s command against
adultery.
‘You shall not swear falsely, This is not a quote from the Torah, nor two quotes stitched together
but shall perform to the Lord either. This is a statement given by his contemporaries that raises
what you have sworn.’
the topic he wishes to address by teaching against the use of oaths
at all.
‘An eye for an eye and a tooth This is a direct quote from the Torah, although it is not quoted with
for a tooth.’
any context that would suggest a specific application or issue. This
is given to address its non-applicability for the situations of
persecution and abuse that his hearers may suffer and that calls for
application of a different rule.
‘You
shall
love
your The first part is a direct quote from the Torah, the second is not.
neighbour and hate your This is to further address the same issue as raised in the previous
enemy.’
section. This statement also suggests that the previous statement
incorporates inappropriate then-contemporary use or application.
There is no need to take any of these statements and teachings in response to the statements as
contrasting the law of Moses with the Lord’s teaching. To demonstrate this we will examine the
teaching on oaths, as this appears to have the most contrast, taken at face value, with the Law of
Moses.
The first issue is the scope of the teaching against oaths. Apparently rhetorical oaths are not
restricted, as these are used by Paul in his letters, perhaps only for emphasis. Oaths to support
promises appear to be most in view in the context, and since the reason given is “since you cannot
make one hair white or black.” (Mat. 5:36) Oaths in the context of initiating and supporting civil
litigation might be restricted given the negative view of initiating civil litigation in the Sermon.
Even if the Lord is teaching against taking oaths and using oaths in litigation, as the Lord gives his own
civil litigation procedure in Mat. 18:15-20 which is administered by the two or three witnesses
(adjudicators) selected by the parties, it may be focused on how that procedure is to be administered
rather than the procedures in the Law of Moses for different situations. Whether the specifications
involving oaths in the Law of Moses should be read as prescriptive, descriptive or illustrative is also a
valid question: taking everything as prescriptive is inappropriate and the Law of Moses should be
fulfilled by taking and applying it in the most appropriate and wise manner, which is often as a teaching
rather than a prescription.
The Law of Moses was applied over a vast expanse of time and over a wide range of institutional and
political circumstances, and it should not be read in an inflexible or prescriptive way even in its original
context. This means more care is required before we should read an instruction or teaching to be an
abrogation or depreciation of the Law of Moses.
It is also possible to interpret the Lord’s teaching against oaths as something like a boycott. The Lord’s
oath teaching (and that of James) can be understood as a response to the abuses and issues with oaths
that had arisen in the cultural context and as addressed in more detail in Mat. 23:16-22. One possible
response to such issues is to boycott the institution of the oath (in whatever scope that might be
appropriate), as the disciples wrongly proposed concerning the institution of marriage when they
objected to the Lord’s teaching against divorce (Mat. 19:10).
Given the variety of the issues raised by the six antitheses and the variety of the responses or points
being made, it seems best to carefully consider each statement and response on a case-by-case basis
without any expectation that the Lord must be teaching a different law or a different standard from
the Law of Moses. Although the advent of the New Covenant and the coming of Kingdom of Heaven
may call for some different applications or behaviours, and the Lord has the authority to address these
issues with new teachings, most or perhaps all the material seems to be addressing misinterpretation
and misapplications of what the Law of Moses had provided centuries prior, and which were still good
law in the dawning Age to Come. The Lord directly denies the claim that he came to abolish the Law
and the Prophets (Mat. 5:17), so we should prefer interpretations of the Sermon focus on upholding
and applying the Torah correctly rather than overruling or depreciating the Torah.
The most appropriate contrast in the Sermon is with the Jerusalem establishment of “the Pharisees
and the teachers of the law” (Mat. 5:20) and “their teachers of the law” (Mat. 7:29). It is this Jerusalem
establishment that is also to be judged to be foolish and destined to have their “house” destroyed by
the eschatological flood (Mat. 7:24-27 cf. Dan. 9:26-27; Mat. 23:38; 24:37-38).
Unfortunately, Keener never addresses either the opening statement on divorce which the Lord
addressed nor the relationship it had to the Lord’s own teaching in the Sermon (pp. 21-37). He only
does this when he addresses Mat. 19:3-9 (p. 42), where he wrongly claims that Deut. 24:1-4 provides
a concession to human weakness which the Lord revoked by his teaching. As the statements or sources
he is addressing differ between Mat. 5:31 and 19:8 – the former being a misquote and the latter being
a reference to the law as given by Moses – the Lord can contradict the former without needing to
contradict the latter. We are required to proceed with sufficient care and attention to this difference
if we are to correctly interpret each account.
Murder, the Death Penalty and Defamation
The saying: ‘You shall not kill1; and whoever kills will be liable to judgement’ is a direct quote from the
Old Testament followed by an additional statement that is not. To understand the cultural context of
the saying, and of the Lord’s teaching in response to it, it is necessary to review not only what the Old
Testament said on the topic, but how that was interpreted and applied in the Lord’s day. This forms
the basis for the contrast or the point that the Lord is making. The Lord’s point is not “ANGER AS
MURDER” (p. 14, as his section heading).
The Old Testament background addressing the topic of murder and killing is vast and often
misinterpreted and misapplied. It is beyond the scope of this review to address the topic in detail. In
summary, the teaching is that political power aggregations by the “mighty men” (i.e. war lords and
political giants) results in the shedding of human blood at scale and with apparent impunity (e.g. Gen.
6:1-13).
As an alternative to this kind of political structure the Torah was given: it teaches that each individual
is marked by God and bears his image, so that, even if he murders his fellow man, he may not be put
to death for it (Gen. 4:10-15). Man was created to be in the one-male-and-one-female configuration,
and to, in that configuration, correctly constitute political power to rule. That power to rule was not
to rule other men but rather the animals (Gen. 1:26-28). Yet, even when man is in the wrong
configuration of one male and many females, even then he bears God’s image and is marked by God
that he may not be put to death, even if he kills his fellow man (Gen. 4:19-24).
Although a man who kills another man deserves to die (Num. 35:16-21), yet the Torah places
procedural obstacles in the way of applying the death penalty, for example, the two-eyewitnesses rule
1
The term in Ex. 20:13 translated “kill” (KJV) in Hebrew is rasah and is means “kill” or “smash” and not “murder.”
It is used for accidental killing in Num. 35 as well as for murder. The command “you shall not kill” applies to
prohibit all killing of human beings, whether on purpose or accidentally, as well as in war and as a judicial
punishment. The modern practice of translating it “murder” is disingenuous and unhelpful.
(Num. 35:30). In practice, therefore, the death penalty is restrained and put out of judicial reach by
the Torah.2
If this is the correct reading of the Torah on the topic of murder and killing, the lawyers and jurists of
the Lord’s day were correct to interpret and apply the Torah as restraining the Sanhedrin from putting
even one man to death in seven years, or in seventy years, or at all (Mishnah Makkot 1:10). So, the
cultural context of “whoever kills will be liable to judgement” is not an endorsement of the application
of the death penalty – rather, the opposite. The Lord is speaking into a context of legal teaching and
application against the death penalty, a position that had come through a long period of legal
development and evolution, based on the Torah itself. This position was also upheld by the earliest
Christians who strongly opposed the death penalty.
This cultural background informs the meaning of the Lord’s sayings about “anger.” It is apparent from
reading the full saying that what is being discussed is not the emotion of anger, but the speaking of
offensive words. For speaking offensive words, one could be dragged to court and sued for all he has
and would be left in debtor’s prison. This is the use of the legal system – and political power – to
restrict and restrain “offensive” speech. But what speech is “offensive”? The offensive speech is
offensive to those who hold political power or have political connections, who can use the legal system
and the courts to silence or punish those who speak words that embarrass them. That is the dynamic
that was all too real in the cultural context and indeed has existed and still exists in many other times
and cultural contexts too.
But the ultimate legal sanction is not a judgment for money damages and debt enforcement
procedures such as debtor’s prison. The ultimate sanction is the death penalty. But, as we noted
2
Under the Torah “bloodshed pollutes the land, and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood
has been shed, except by the blood of the one who shed it” (Num. 35:33). The bloodshed on the land of Israel
therefore accumulates and the land becomes defiled by it, a defilement that requires atonement of the people
of Israel collectively: “Accept this atonement for your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, Lord, and do not
hold your people guilty of the blood of an innocent person” (Deut. 21:8). But the true atonement for the human
blood shed on the land was to happen at the end of Israel’s days, when YHWH himself would “take vengeance
on his enemies and make atonement for his land and his people” (Deut. 32:43). As the beasts were held
accountable and judged by the flood of water, so the “beasts” would be held accountable for shedding human
blood again (Gen. 9:5-6), in the Second Flood, not of water but of men of war, upon Israel’s city and sanctuary
(Dan. 9:26-27), when her house would be washed away (Mat. 7:24-27) and her house left to her desolate (Mat.
23:38) when the king would send his troops to destroy those murderers and burn their city (Mat. 22:7).
The tension between the requirement to shed the blood of the murderers and the inability to do so is resolved
eschatologically at the old Israel’s “end” (Deut. 32:20,29) when she would be a perverse generation (Deut.
32:20), and a nation without sense or discernment (Deut. 32:28). Israel’s bloodguilt would be accumulated over
her covenant history till it was piled up to heaven and her measure of sin was full and then she would be repaid,
and she would be judged at her end (Deut. 32:32-35; Is. 65:6-7; Mat. 23:32; 1 Thes. 2:14-16; Rev. 18:4-8,24). The
tension is not resolved by the re-institution of the death penalty in the Age to Come and its application to
everyone who sheds the blood of a man.
above, the death penalty was supposedly off the table, so restrained and civilised was their legal
system via the Torah and their scholars. Yet, as the Torah teaches, the aggregation of political power
fosters the use of political power to kill those who would challenge incumbents. This dynamic was too
powerful to be restrained by the expert legal opinions of the Torah teachers. It was the Lord who got
angry, and who called the Pharisees and those who sat on Moses’ seat “blind fools”, and for that he
was tried and condemned to die by the Sanhedrin and was handed over to the Romans to be put to
death by crucifixion. After that his body was in danger of being thrown into the fire of Gehenna outside
the city. Is it not surprising that the Lord’s followers immediately accused the Sanhedrin of political
murder in Acts 7:52?
Keener has lost the plot on this one, stating blithely that “is there any reader who could suppose that
the supreme court [i.e. the Sanhedrin] would have tried people for the offence of calling people a
name?” (p. 14). Anyone who has read the rest of the book gets to read exactly that.
The Lord’s point is not really the prudential advice that he didn’t follow himself. Rather, it was a barb
against his enemies. And it was about their resort to the death penalty that they supposedly didn’t
believe in, and not for murder, but for angry and offensive words challenging their power. Is the Lord’s
statement hyperbolic? Perhaps, but the more appropriate term for the literary technique on
Matthew’s part here is “dramatic irony.”
Mat. 5:21-26 is to be read largely at face value. It is political satire: barbs dressed up as prudential
sayings. It does not provide any support for Keener’s claim that it means we should read the divorce
sayings as vague generalizations loaded with exaggeration.
The Adultery Inclusio
The next sayings are united by a common theme: adultery. The reference to adultery in Mat. 5:27 is
an inclusio opening that is closed off by the second reference to adultery in Mat. 5:32. If Mat. 5:32
deals with adultery by divorce, why not the rest of the sayings in Mat. 5:28-30? Keener ignores this
inclusio and wrongly treats the material in a disconnected way.
The connection between the different sayings in Mat. 5:28 and Mat. 5:32 is that a man commits, or
causes the commission of, the sin of adultery by doing something other than personally having sexual
intercourse with another man’s wife. In Mat. 5:28 it is by looking with desire at a woman. In Mat. 5:32
it is by a) divorcing his wife and/or b) marrying a divorced woman. None of these sayings directly
reference the man having sexual intercourse with another man’s wife.
Let’s look at the divorce saying in Mat. 5:32a first. Here the man (man 1) is guilty of causing his wife
to commit adultery3 by his wrongful divorce of her. For the sake of simplicity, and since the saying only
refers to him causing her to commit adultery rather than committing it himself, the point of the saying
is to implicate the man wrongfully divorcing his wife for adultery committed subsequently by his wife
(when she marries man 2).
We should briefly point out that the saying does not assert that he caused her to become an
adulteress, rather, it asserts he causes her to commit adultery. So, it does not imply that the exception
clause refers to her causing herself to become an adulteress before he divorced her: she may have
been an adulteress already, and then by his wrongful divorce he causes her to commit adultery again.
We will address the exception clause later in the paper to show that it does not refer to the wife
committing adultery against her husband.
The divorce saying in Mat. 5:32b is similar in that the man is guilty of adultery not by having sexual
intercourse with another man’s wife but by marrying her. In the cultural context, the marriage starts
at the betrothal. When the married couple celebrate their wedding ceremony, and then consummate
the marriage by having sexual intercourse with each other for the first time, this takes place about
one year after the betrothal. Taken at face value, the Lord condemns as adultery the act of marrying
a divorced woman, apparently even if the subsequent marriage is broken off before the wedding and
before he has sexual intercourse with the woman.
Combining Mat. 5:32a and 32b together we can have the scenario when man 1 wrongfully divorces
woman 1, and man 2 then marries (is betrothed to) woman 1, then woman 1 dies before man 2 has
sexual intercourse with her. Taken at face value the ruling is that man 2 and woman 1 still commit
adultery by marriage to each other and man 1 is responsible for causing it.
3
Keener discusses (p. 36) the claim by Luck that the adultery is the husband’s wrongful divorce of the wife rather
than the wife’s subsequent marriage or subsequent sexual intercourse with another man, which is also
suggested by the NIV’s translation “makes her a victim of adultery” (no other English translation takes this
approach). Keener prefers the meaning that the wife is made to commit adultery by or in her subsequent
marriage, which is by far the more accepted translation and interpretation.
Although there is a fair claim that the husband’s wrongful divorce is itself adultery, violating his duty of
exclusivity to her under the marriage contract, this does not seem to fit the text in Mat. 5:32a where the husband
causes the wife to commit adultery. If the point being made was that the divorce itself constitutes adultery
against her, we would expect this to follow the form in Mark 10:11 where he “commits adultery against her.”
The passive form of “commits adultery” in Mat. 5:32a on the part of the wife can indicate that the wife is treated
as the passive subject of the adultery actively committed by her new husband, either when he marries her or
when he has sexual intercourse with her, and it does not mean that a new act involving the wife is not being
referred to. The passive form might also or instead indicate that the woman’s responsibility – which the saying
places on her former husband – is being de-emphasized or even denied.
The Definition and Scope of Adultery
Adultery is defined by reference to a marital obligation that is breached.4 If a person does not have a
current marital obligation, his or her unlawful sexual intercourse with another (unmarried) person is
not adultery. I don’t think it is helpful in this context to talk about a form of adultery against a “spouse
to be” per Keener p. 17 discussing Mat. 5:28. Rather, the reference to adultery suggests cheating a
present spouse, but potentially by conduct other than having sexual intercourse with a third person.
Having sexual intercourse with a third person breaches the marital obligation of exclusivity of sexual
intercourse. However, the marital obligation of exclusivity extends to more than sexual intercourse:
most fundamentally it is exclusivity of status. When one gets married to a woman, he promises to be
her husband exclusively and she promises to be his wife exclusively, so long as they both shall live. To
divorce one’s wife is to deprive her of that status, and for either party to subsequently marry another
is to violate that status also. Looked at in this way, divorce and remarriage, by themselves and without
any sexual intercourse, constitute the complete offence of adultery. In the same way, Paul says that
living with another man while your husband is alive constitutes adultery (Rom. 7:3). Rather than
treating these statuses of marriage or living together as deemed sexual intercourse, these statuses or
living arrangements should be treated as violative of the marital obligations of exclusivity in and of
themselves. These offences are arguably complete adultery rather than inchoate adultery, on the
Lord’s (and Paul’s) rulings.
4
The Torah does not have any definition of adultery and the closest biblical definition is Paul’s summary in Rom.
7:3. The cultural and legal tendency seems to have been to define it in terms of the husband’s right to the
exclusive sexual access to his wife without necessarily including the wife’s right to the exclusive sexual access to
her husband, thereby defining adultery in such a way as to allow polygyny. However, this view is not to be read
back into the biblical material itself, as the biblical material has a more symmetrical approach, protective of
wives’ exclusivity rights also, most directly in Lev. 18:18, if translated and interpreted correctly. The phrase of
taking a woman “to her sister” does not mean “and her sister.” The taking of a man to his brother or a woman
to her sister means to take two or more things as a chain or as a group, and it does not mean that those things
are human brothers or sisters. Thus the Torah directly forbids a man to take another woman during the life of
his wife, because that would infringe on the rights of exclusivity of the wife, which is exactly our point here.
Adultery can be defined in terms of the feeling of marital jealousy that arises when someone else has sexual
access to his or her spouse (e.g. Num. 5:11-31; Pr. 6:34). Yet, the woman in Song of Songs, itself an anti-polygyny
drama, insists that she alone be sealed upon the heart of her betrothed husband, and she alone be sealed
publicly on his arm, and that her love for him would be expressed in jealousy over him, till death (Song 8:6). This
jealousy she holds concerning her betrothed husband contrasts with her adamant refusal to belong to Solomon
on the grounds that he already has a “vineyard” (a woman) who is really the “noisy throng” at the made-up
place name Baal-Harmon, (meaning “the husband of the noisy throng”) and who is really 1000 women (Song
8:11-12 cf. 1 Kings 11:3). In other words, jealousy for her means she will be jealous if her one husband has any
other woman, and she wants this jealous possession of her true husband rather than becoming Solomon’s
additional wife.
The New Testament material is explicit in ruling that the wife owns the husband’s body, sexually (1 Cor. 7:4) and
that the husband commits adultery against his wife if he marries another (Mark 10:11).
Mat. 5:28 refers to looking on a woman to desire her as adultery. The term “desire” (Greek:
epithymeo) does not mean wrongful sexual desire, it simply means desire, whether for sexual
intercourse or something else, and whether illicit or licit (as in Mat. 13:17). Given the ruling of adultery,
the most natural reading is that the man has a present wife but is looking at another woman with the
desire to have her as his new wife, in violation of his exclusivity obligations in is marriage to his present
wife. Although he could be meaning to keep his existing wife and add another woman, the more likely
intended scenario is that he plans to divorce his existing wife.
Would not his existing wife be not only jealous to find him courting another woman, but also deeply
offended and wracked with insecurity? Is she not right to claim this behaviour constitutes him cheating
on her, violating their marriage contract and committing adultery against her? Is not this the kind of
looking at a woman with desire that merits the Lord’s warning and condemnation, rather than simply
admiring another woman’s physical beauty or charm without any intention or effort to substitute her
for your existing wife? Job refers to the reason he will not look for a virgin in Job 31:1 it is because he
made a covenant concerning his eyes. When he married his wife, he promised to her – in the marriage
contract – that he would not take another wife. The other wife is a virgin, and so she is presumably
unmarried and suitable for marriage.
Rather than the Lord ruling that “no offence is minor under this legislation” (p. 14, referring to angry
words but just as applicable to looking at a woman with desire), his point is that even looking for
another woman to substitute for your wife is a completed major offence: adultery. It is a real violation
of a marriage and a grievous wound to your wife’s status and feeling of emotional security to threaten
her with divorce or substitution even if you do not carry it out. The Lord is not building a fence around
the Torah, he is showing us where the fence of adultery truly is and warning us not to cross it.
“devouring widow’s houses” and Judicial and Political Responsibility
It is helpful at this point to look at the divorce and remarriage issue as a sequential process, assuming
that the original spouses are still alive. First the man looks for another wife. Then he unlawfully
divorces his wife. Then he marries another person. His ex-wife may marry another, too. Then they
each have sexual intercourse with their respective new spouses.
However, the above sequential divorce and remarriage process glosses over the messy part of divorce:
financial settlement. Although the Lord never discusses the issue in any detail, he does charge the
scribes and the Pharisees with an unusually specific injustice of “devouring widow’s houses” (Mat.
23:14) and tells a parable about an unjust judge of Israel who only granted judgement for a widow’s
suit for her persistence (Luke 18:1-6).
If we have a good understanding of the cultural context, we should know that the wife’s marital and
financial security was provided for her in her marriage contract, which provided the compensation she
would be due if her husband abandoned or divorced her. A divorced woman is called a widow in the
cultural context: for example, Philo describes the woman who was divorced by her first husband in
Deut. 24:1 as again becoming a widow “whether her second husband is alive or dead” (Special Laws
3:30). The same usage of widowhood is seen for a divorced wife in Is. 54:1-6.
The idea of a “house,” as in English, does not just mean a physical building, it can refer to an institution
(such as the House of Parliament) or an estate. To devour the “house” of a widow means, in context,
to devour the estate or pool of financial resources belonging to the widow, generally because of her
widowhood.
In the case of divorce, this “house” or pool of financial resources is the property and/or entitlements
of the wife specified in her marriage contract and payable to her if her husband abandons or divorces
her. However, what was supposed to provide her with security of her married status was then denied
to her by pretext of finding fault with her as wife, in the cultural context:
And these are examples of women who may be divorced without payment of their marriage
contract: A woman who violates the precepts of Moses, i.e., halakha, or the precepts of Jewish
women, i.e., custom. The Mishna explains: And who is categorized as a woman who violates
the precepts of Moses? This includes cases such as when she feeds him food that has not been
tithed, or she engages in sexual intercourse with him while she has the legal status of a
menstruating woman, or she does not separate a portion of dough to be given to a priest
[ḥalla], or she vows and does not fulfill her vows. And who is considered a woman who violates
the precepts of Jewish women? One who, for example, goes out of her house, and her head,
i.e., her hair, is uncovered; or she spins wool in the public marketplace; or she speaks with
every man she encounters. Abba Shaul says: Also one who curses his, i.e., her husband’s,
parents in his presence. Rabbi Tarfon says: Also a loud woman. And who is defined as a loud
woman? When she speaks inside her house and her neighbors hear her voice. (Mishnah
Ketubot 7:6)
Keener’s contention that “wives were rarely divorced on frivolous grounds – the monetary aspects of
the contract would see to that” (p. 47) does not seem to be correct at all. Rather, the gutting of the
wives’ financial rights – via fault-finding – should be seen as central to the problem that the Lord
addressed. That said, we are not claiming that the Lord addressed this concern by specifying minimum
standards of fault or payment: rather, he taught against divorce in a more comprehensive and
principled way, as well as condemning cheating wives out of their money.5 Keener’s observation that
Luke’s placement of the divorce saying “sandwiched between two money parables” (p. 26) is perhaps
better explained by the financial injustice typically involved than by his claim that it “suggests a
summons to radical commitment”.
So, if we want to make a more complete sequence of the process of divorce and remarriage, we should
include the legal and financial enablement of the divorce by the man: cheating the wife out of her
financial security as well as of her marital security by means of finding fault and using the legal system
and its gatekeepers: the judges and lawyers. It is these third parties in positions of leadership that the
Lord addresses next in Mat. 5:29-30 under the titles of political and judicial power: the “right eye” and
the “right hand” of the “body.” These are, of course, the very same characters that the Lord has just
criticised in Mat. 5:21-26, and the complaint is the same: they work injustice and abuse (and there
death and here adultery) by means of the legal system.
The political meaning of the ”right eye,” the “right hand”
The ”right eye” of the “body” of Israel is its leadership, its shepherds. In condemning Israel to bad
leaders, Zechariah is told to take up the equipment of the foolish shepherd because YHWH was to
raise up a shepherd who does not care for those being destroyed (Zech. 11:15-16). The judgement of
this worthless shepherd is then against his arm and his “right eye” (Zech. 11:17).
The organ of the eye signifies sight, and “the knowledge of good and evil” (2 Sam. 14:17 cf. Gen. 2-3)
which is equivalent to “to know all things that are on the earth” (2 Sam. 14:20). This “knowledge of
good and evil” is, in particular, “to judge the people” judicially (1 Kings 3:9).
5
Keener’s position that we should distinguish between the guilty and innocent parties to a divorce, and that
(apparently) we should punish the guilty by restricting them from remarriage but that we should not punish the
innocent and should allow them to remarry is a distinction that is problematic in the context of this issue in the
cultural context. Indeed, it is problematic in other cultural contexts, too, and has fallen out of favour with the
rise of no-fault divorce.
Although it is true that there is sound policy and biblical basis for withholding discipline for merely suffering a
divorce or having the status of being divorced, it does not follow that this is or should be expressed in any rulings
on the validity or effectiveness of the divorce or the legal permission or capacity of the spouses to remarry.
The main thrust of the Lord’s teaching is against divorce and remarriage in general rather than an attempt to
restore or preserve financial entitlements or measurements of relative fault notwithstanding significant reason
to address fault-finding financial abuses that financially enabled post-wedding divorce.
That said, the Lord did say quite a lot about financial motivation and asset protection: adultery proceeds from
the “heart” (Mat. 15:18-19), and a man commits adultery first in his “heart” (Mat. 5:28) and that where a man’s
treasure is, there his “heart” will be also (Mat. 6:21). If the marriage contract is wisely drafted and upheld with
integrity, the man’s love for his wife and the wife’s marital status will be better preserved rather than devoured
by financial injustice.
The “right hand” is a position of authority (e.g. Gen. 48:18: Ps. 80:17; 110:1; Mat. 20:21), and which
may be torn off as Coniah, king of Judah, was to be in Jer. 22:24. This is the only biblical precedent
meaning of cutting off the right hand and throwing it away.
The “body” that was to be thrown into Gehenna was the corpse of the old Israel, which was to be
eaten by vultures (Mat. 24:28), when the rebels (Mat. 24:7) are defeated and their bodies are
consumed by worms and fire (Is. 66:24; Mark 9:42-48).
In the parallel texts the woe is upon the people who cause others to sin (Mat. 18:5-14) and the
Christian application of the teaching to remove eyes and hands from the body (the new body, the
body of Christ) by excommunication (Mat. 18:15-20).
In what way were the “right hand” and the “right eye” causing people to sin and to commit adultery?
In the textual and cultural context, the answer is by authorising or approving post-wedding divorce
and remarriage and facilitating it by depriving wives of their security in their marriages by relieving
their husbands of liability to pay the liquidated damages clauses in their marriage contracts by means
of findings of the wife’s own faults.
Pulling together these strands, the Lord addresses multiple parties as responsible for causing adultery
by divorce and remarriage: The man who looks at another woman with the desire to marry her when
he is already married (or invalidly and ineffectively divorced), the judges and lawyers who found fault
to facilitate and justify unlawful divorces and to deprive women not only of their security of status in
marriage but also of their financial security or compensation rights, men who invalidly and
ineffectively divorce their wives, and men who marry such divorced women. All these men are
responsible for adultery by doing these kinds of things within the adultery inclusio between 5:27 and
5:32.
Hyperbole or a legal reading of the divorce sayings?
Now that we have shown the nature and targets of the Lord’s statements in Mat. 5:21-32 we can
address Keener’s attempt to de-legalise the divorce and remarriage sayings, painting them as
hyperbolic. However, Keener nevertheless concedes the point that the Lord’s divorce and remarriage
saying must be treated as “an authoritative rabbi’s exposition of the law” (p. 26). He also concedes
that in Matthew “where there is an emphasis on the church disciplining its erring members, the rule
is more likely to be applied in a legal way” (p. 26, emphasis in original).
But, to escape the legal application of the Lord’s sayings on divorce and remarriage in the Sermon on
the Mount and elsewhere, Keener attempts to soften the ruling by characterising it as a “general
statement of principle” which “must be qualified when it is used to address specific situations” (p. 26)
Keener’s result, however, does not seem radical in its condemnation of divorce and remarriage, with
plenty of escapes if the burden becomes heavy or if the performance of the duties becomes
unreasonable.
However, Keener claims that the use of hyperbole and exaggeration is “to force us to grapple with the
radicalness of what is says, to shake us into changing the way we think and live” (p. 24). If the Lord
merely tightened up a few post-wedding divorce loopholes of his day, his teaching is not radical at all,
it is incremental and moderate. It does not force us to change how we think and how we live, it rather
changes our options and behaviour in the marginal cases between the old standard and the new
standard of what the wife would have to do wrong before we could dispose of her and get another
one. The response of the Lord’s disciples later that “If this is the situation between a husband and
wife, it is better not to marry” also suggests that the Lord’s teaching indeed was to shake up their
assumptions and approach to the issue in a more fundamental way. In the same way, on hearing the
Lord’s rulings, the crowds were “amazed” at his teachings (Mat. 7:28). The Pharisees seem to have
heard the Lord’s prior teachings as denying that divorce is lawful at all (Mark 10:2) or as denying that
there was any charge for which a man could divorce his wife (Mat. 19:3). They did not seem to assume
that the Lord’s sayings were narrow in scope and came with many unstated exceptions and excuses
permitting divorce.
A more careful and a more legal approach to the Lord’s sayings, read through the cultural context, is
what is required here. Even though Keener is right that the statements admit exceptions and
qualifications, that does not mean that we can create our own exceptions and qualifications to meet
our assumptions and attitudes, or that the Lord was accommodating the assumptions and attitudes
of his day either. The onus is on us to read the Lord fairly and correctly as to what the qualifications
are on the topic.
The Exception Clause: the importance of logos in Mat. 5:32
The only express qualification is the exception “except logos porneia” in Mat. 5:32 referenced a second
time simply as “if not for porneia” in Mat. 19:9. What does this exception refer to? Most interpreters,
including Keener, simply assume that the exception refers to some misconduct of the wife that may
be identified with the word porneia. “The question is, what does he mean by “immorality” [Keener’s
mistranslation of porneia]? The term itself is straightforward enough and refers to any kind of sexual
immorality” (p. 28). However, this is assuming what needs to be proved: that porneia indeed refers to
the misconduct of the wife against her husband in the marriage after the marriage was contracted.
The introduction of the exception is in Mat. 5:32. It is here that it is expressed as “except logos
porneia.” What does the word logos mean here? Keener appears to claim that it “the Hebrew word
“matter” [debar from Deut. 24:1] comes over into Greek quite naturally in the term here translated
“case”” (p. 28) There are a few problems with this statement. The first problem is that there is nothing
in the context of his writing that refers to anything that is translated “case.” (It appears he may be
referring to someone else’s text that he does not quote.) The second problem is that while the term
“case,” in the sense of an authoritative “case law”, is a possible meaning of logos, it is not the Greek
translation of the word debar (thing or matter) in the Septuagint, which is pragma. Unlike logos,
pragma does mean a deed, act or fact. If the Lord or Matthew wished to convert the vague Hebrew
phrase in Deut. 24:1 debar [thing] ervat [exposed] into a clear (or not-so-clear) “deed of immorality”
(per Keener, p. 28, my paraphrase) then he would be expected to use the Septuagint’s pragma (which
everyone would take as an allusion to Deut. 24:1) together with his preferred description of what that
deed or misconduct was, such as adultery or impropriety. The fact that this term designating conduct
(or here, misconduct) is not used, should put us on the alert that this is not what is going on here.
Logos means an authoritative statement such as a judgement or a ruling. For example, in Mat. 5:37
the Lord ruled that “let your logos be yes yes, or no no.” This means that a man’s logos is his
authoritative statement of equal force to his oath. And the Lord’s commands and rulings are his logos
(Mat. 7:24,26). Likewise, the Lord’s orders to heal and cast out spirits by his authority were his logos
(Mat. 8:16). A man’s judgement against the Son of Man is his logos (Mat. 12:32) by which he will also
be judged (Mat. 12:36). Likewise, when a master takes accounts from his servants, he takes their logos
(or gives his own logos concerning their performance) (Mat. 18:23; 25:19). The Lord asks a man for
one logos (one judgement) in Mat. 21:24, but men were not able to answer him a logos in Mat. 22:46.
Unusually, a logos may be a formal petition for relief (Mat. 26:44), which could perhaps be construed
as a formal statement of claim requiring an answer to be either granted or dismissed.
Logos, in Matthew, is never used for a person’s conduct, whether good or evil; it is always a formal or
authoritative statement or pronouncement of a person, and often a legal judgement or ruling. As in
Mark 7:13, the logos may be the logos of God, i.e. the Torah. In the context of Mat. 5:32, therefore,
we are required to look for an authoritative statement concerning divorce in the Torah that is linked
somehow to the word “porneia”.
There is only one such law in the Torah on divorce that includes any form of the word porneia or its
equivalent in Hebrew, zanah: the case of the defamed bride in Deut. 22:13-21. This law addresses a
bride who is accused of “whoring (Heb. zanah) in her father’s house” before she was betrothed to her
husband, and who was allegedly found out on the wedding consummation. Because of his defamation
of his bride the man is given a capital case he can never win (see above on the unavailability of the
death penalty), and when he loses this case, besides being loaded with a huge damages judgement
and a flogging for defamation, the bride is ruled to be secure as his wife: “she is his wife, and he may
not divorce her all of his days.” (This applies even if she was guilty of whoring in her father’s house, as
he could never prove it. So, this law powerfully protects guilty defiled non-virgin brides and grants
them fully lawful, confirmed, and secure marriages in these circumstances.)
The counterfactual scenario when the man does not defame his bride, but proceeds quietly, properly,
and promptly after discovering the problem on the wedding consummation is not explicitly addressed
by the case. However, it can be – and was in the cultural context – inferred from it. Such a man will
not have a capital case, rather a civil case for post-wedding (and post consummation) divorce. But
what does a man have to prove in such a case? Based on the corresponding capital case, he has to
prove that she was “whoring in her father’s house.” As we shall see this is a difficult thing to prove,
even to the civil standard of proof.
The term “her father’s house” refers to her status as under the protection of and within the
membership of her father’s “house” where “house” is a legal and financial estate rather than a physical
building (see above for the corresponding term “widows’ houses”). When a woman is betrothed to
her husband, he pays her father the bride price, and the woman then moves – legally – to “her
husband’s house.” This means that if the bride is raped after the betrothal, the man can no longer win
a virginity claim if he discovers it on the wedding consummation (Mishnah Ketubot 1). When analysed
and viewed considering both the factual and the counter-factual case, as interpreted and applied in
the Lord’s cultural context, we therefore have a case that restricts post-wedding (and postconsummation) divorce, with a narrow exception for the case where the woman was established to
have been “whoring in her father’s house” before the betrothal but was found out on the wedding
consummation. Thus, when the Lord rules against divorce, except for “the porneia case” as in Mat.
5:32, the divorces the Lord is objecting to are post-wedding (and post-consummation) divorces and
the reference to porneia is to the scenario for which the Torah was understood to have recognised a
post-consummation divorce remedy, i.e. for pre-betrothal misconduct that included fraudulent
inducement into the betrothal itself. Conduct during the betrothal and after the wedding or
consummation are outside the scope of porneia in this case law.
This legal reference not only incorporates the scenario of the case, but it also incorporates the policy
of the Torah: after the wedding consummation, you are too late to divorce your wife on grounds of
non-virginity unless you can prove she was misrepresented to you as a virgin at the time she was
betrothed to you and you proceed without defaming her first.6 The Lord’s anti-divorce teaching
applied only to post-wedding and post consummation divorce and it recognised and allowed this
narrow exception from the Torah for post-wedding divorce – together with its applicable safeguards.
This exception is narrow and technical enough for Mark and Luke and Paul to disregard it as
inapplicable or not worth mentioning.
Explaining the meaning of porneia in the exception clause
But what is the true meaning of porneia in this context? Can we agree with Keener that “The term
itself is straightforward enough and refers to any kind of sexual immorality” (p. 28, emphasis added)?
Keener’s approach is to suggest that porneia, “is a broader term” meaning “more than what is
narrowly signified by “adultery”” (p. 31). Unfortunately for the reader, this is the wrong approach and
the wrong conclusion.
Although there is a difference between “adultery” and porneia, the signification of porneia is not to
cover less serious forms of sexual immorality by a woman but rather to cover wrongly promiscuous
sexual immorality by a woman. Exactly what this means in this context and how is the subject of this
section of the review.
To address the semantic issue, it is necessary to examine the data in the light of the social context of
ancient Israel, as revealed in the Old Testament. We will focus on the categorisation of women and
the nature of the requirements on women and the labels given to women when they break the
requirements.
Our focus here is on the status and conduct of women for two reasons. Firstly, the party the term is
applied to in Mat. 5:32 and 19:9 is the wife rather than the husband. Secondly, this is how sexual
morality and sexual conduct was primarily conceptualised and discussed in the cultural context.
There are two distinct and identifiable requirements on women’s sexual conduct that is relevant and
that can be identified from the Old Testament:
1. The requirement for restraint and discretion. A woman should not make herself widely
available to multiple men for sexual intercourse.
6
The Mishnah also restricted these claims in other ways: for example, your wedding would have to be on a
Wednesday and your claim would have to be filed the next day (Thursday), otherwise you would be out of time
or out of luck with such a claim. Also, if you had dinner at your father-in-law’s house during the betrothal period
without other witnesses present, you would have been presumed to have taken the bride’s virginity at that time,
and therefore barred from making a virginity claim on the wedding consummation.
2. The requirement for faithfulness. This applies only to married women, and a married woman
should not have any sexual intercourse (or even inappropriate contact less than sexual
intercourse) with any other man.
Our analysis here will show that porneia (and zanah in the Hebrew in the Old Testament) refers to the
violation of the first requirement, rather than the second.
Etymology must be used with caution but is nevertheless helpful in this case: Strong’s dictionary
suggests zanah comes from a word that means “highly-fed and therefore wanton.” This suggests that
the word may refer to the manner of the conduct rather than its kind: as the highly fed one is
presumed to eat anything wantonly and without discrimination, as sexual conduct it suggests a
woman who has sexual intercourse with men wantonly and without discrimination – which culturally
and socially means with any man who will pay her fee. In modern English we call this manner of sexual
conduct promiscuity and this as a profession we call prostitution. The etymology of the Greek word
porneia is from the word “to sell” and it refers to the prostitute who sells the service of having sexual
intercourse with herself for money. The etymology of the English word fornication is from the Latin
fornix referring to the arches of the brothel. Accordingly, at least based on etymology and with the
required cautions, none of these words should be defined as “sexual immorality” as a catch-all for any
sexual intercourse that we wish to condemn or that is unlawful for any reason.
Possibly the word is used in one case in the Old Testament not for sexual promiscuity (prostitution)
but rather for accepting any man as a guest in an inn for a fee. If Rahab was only an innkeeper (and I
am not sure whether this is correct or can be proven), the term is used in this case concerning the
mode of business of the innkeeper rather than for a manner of sexual intercourse by a woman (Josh.
2:1).
The case of Israel’s worship of other gods as well as YHWH is also instructive, although it requires
careful handling. YHWH, unlike the gods of the nations, is jealous, and does not tolerate sharing Israel’s
affections and service (e.g. Ex. 20:5). Israel’s covenant with YHWH is metaphorically a marriage
contract, which means or includes the meaning of a contract of exclusivity. This means that,
metaphorically, when Israel went after other gods – in addition to YHWH – she committed adultery
against him and aroused YHWH’s jealousy (e.g. Ez. 16:38). However, unlike YHWH, the other gods are
not necessarily jealous gods: they often accept shared worship and affection from their people.
Correspondingly, the people would not have covenants of exclusivity with only one god and would
worship and serve multiple gods simultaneously. Thus, it was not only Israel that went “whoring” (Heb.
zanah) after the foreign gods, the other nations would whore after their gods (plural) as well (e.g. Ex.
34:14-16).
Israel’s story illustrates the pecking order among women: she was born lowly and despised on the day
she was born as a gentile (Ez. 16:2-5). YHWH nevertheless rescued her and provided for her and
esteemed her by giving her a covenant of love: a marriage contract, a betrothal (Ez. 16:6-8). As a
betrothed and loved woman, she was showered with gifts and provisions (Ez. 16:9-14), i.e. her land
(leasehold tenure), her safety, her population growth etc. However, improperly, Israel showered these
gifts on other gods and sought after them (Ez. 16:15-19). In this approach to other gods, Israel
prostituted herself, she was not only unfaithful, she was promiscuous. She took her own population
(her “children”) and sacrificed them to the other gods: in this she was like a prostitute who refused
payment and who paid men to have sexual intercourse with her (Ez. 16:20-31). This was in fulfilment
of the curses of the covenant, when she would “offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and
female slaves, but there will be no buyer” (Deut. 28:68). The charge against Israel is more than simply
adultery. Rather, she descended to the status of prostitute, but even then she could and did descend
lower: she was the woman who willingly paid other men her own children for them to have sexual
intercourse with her. The distinction between adultery and prostitution is illustrated by Jeremiah
when he characterises Israel as a wild donkey or a restless camel on heat, with unrestrained lust for
sexual intercourse: “none who seek her need weary themselves.” (Jer. 2:23-24). Not only was Israel
unfaithful to her husband, but she was also promiscuous and did it openly and without shame (e.g.
Jer. 3:3). In summary, Israel’s story discloses more than adultery, she was promiscuous as a
compounding yet distinct offence against her betrothed husband YHWH. Although she was divorced
by YHWH for both adultery and promiscuity (Jer. 3:1,8), the two remain distinct terms and offences.
The combination of these two offences in a married woman is explicitly unusual (Ez. 16:34), for the
reason that she had a husband (Ez. 16:32).
However, there is another usage of zanah / porneia that we are required to account for. If the term
refers only to actual promiscuity, the meaning in Mat. 5:32 and 19:9 would probably have to mean:
you can only divorce your wife if she actually becomes a prostitute or a woman as promiscuous as a
prostitute. Although this would virtually eliminate the idea of divorce for adultery, it is an inherently
unlikely meaning. As far as I know, no one has ever claimed this is the meaning of the exception clause
in Matthew. But, if the claim was made, it would have a better support than Keener’s claim that the
term signifies a lower level of sexual immorality than adultery by having sexual relations with another
man.
What is the solution? The offence (or the issue) of promiscuity can be sub-divided into two subcategories:
1. Actual promiscuity, and
2. Deemed promiscuity.
The legal concept of deeming is of labelling, definition or treatment, rather than fact or true meaning.
To deem A to be B is not to claim that A is B, rather it is to claim that A is to be treated as if it were B
even if it is not. A is therefore B by legal fiction, rather than in fact. Deeming is used to alter how the
legislation or contract operates: B is defined to be A in order to put B into the same category as A, in
order for B to be treated as if it is A.
The same applies to the more informal process of social deeming of what is included or excluded from
a word meaning. If we accept that a word in a particular context (or in general) should incorporate
something else, we can informally deem that something else to be within the definition of the word
by using the word in that way and accepting its use in that way. Although usage cases can be helpful
to establish whether this has or has not happened, it can also help to understand social context and
thinking process that appears to have produced the need to expand the word meaning by the
deeming. This is what we will do in the case of deemed promiscuity.
The concept of promiscuity exists within the context of the moral, social and/or legal requirement on
a woman for restraint and discretion. “Promiscuity” is the label we place (or zanah is a label that they
placed) on the violation of such a requirement: the terms and concepts are defined in terms of each
other. But what exactly did they mean by the concept of restraint and discretion? And to which people
was this requirement primarily directed? The cultural context indicates that the requirement was
primarily directed to unmarried women, to restrain them to act appropriately. The appropriate way
for an unmarried woman to behave is to secure from the man a lawful marriage contract before she
had sexual intercourse with him. Conversely, for the woman to have sexual relations with a man –
even one man, even only once – is a violation of the appropriate restraint for an unmarried woman
and will deem her to be or to have been “promiscuous.”
Examples of this deeming use can be seen in the case of the defamed bride we discussed in the
previous section. In that case we have a young woman who (allegedly) lost her virginity before she
was betrothed to a man, and she was found out on the wedding consummation. This could have
happened in a single experience of sexual intercourse. Yet, if this is what happened, she is guilty of
“whoring (Heb. zanah) in her father’s house”. This is a case of deemed promiscuity, whether actual
promiscuity took place or not. In the same way, a single sexual encounter – without a lawful marriage
contract – between Shechem and Dinah was protested by Dinah’s brothers as Shechem treating Dinah
as a prostitute or alternatively and equivalently, as a promiscuous woman (Gen. 34). And again, when
Tamar, who was an unmarried widow, was found to be pregnant by an unknown man, the immediate
accusation is that she is pregnant from promiscuity (Heb. zanah), without any knowledge of the details
of how she became pregnant (Gen. 38). The instruction to fathers not to make their daughters zanah
raises the question of what exactly this meant. Most comprehensively it means that the father should
keep her from having sexual intercourse with anyone before she is betrothed to a husband (after
which she becomes his responsibility, not his, even before the wedding during the betrothal period as
noted in the defamed bride case). But we may still ask what was the main mischief that the law was
addressing. According to Rabbi Akeva, the command was addressing the man who did not betroth his
daughter to a husband by the time she had fully grown up, so that she might be tempted to have
sexual intercourse with a man outside of marriage (Sanhedrin 76a). At least this seems to adequately
capture the deemed promiscuity meaning of zanah in this case and not just the case of actual
promiscuity.
With this deemed promiscuity usage established, directed at unmarried women, we can now contrast
the situation for the married woman. A married woman can be guilty of na’ap (adultery) without being
guilty of zanah. An unfaithful woman need not be promiscuous to commit adultery or in her
commission of adultery. Normally she is not: she has one lover in secret, who will give her the kindness
she needs and who she may keep going to back to visit. This normal scenario of the unfaithful wife can
be seen in the procedure of the Jews restricting the access to the ritual of bitter water in Num. 5:11f,
where the husband was required to warn his wife first not to speak with a particular man he suspected
her to be committing adultery with (Mishnah Sotah 1:1). By contrast, the cases of Israel and Gomer
were exceptionally unusual, where a married woman would be guilty of promiscuity (Ez. 16; Hos. 3:13). Likewise, the tragic case of a wife forced to become a prostitute (Amos. 7:17), it forces her to do
something wives otherwise almost never do.
Having set out this semantic and cultural material, we can see that the sins of adultery and zanah
generally do not overlap. If the wife has sexual intercourse with (or even flirts with) another man, this
is a direct violation of the marriage contract of exclusivity applicable to the woman and may
reasonably be included in the category of adultery. In this case, there is no need to deem her nonpromiscuous behaviour to be promiscuous in order to characterise it or categorise it as out of order.
And generally, the adulterous wife is not actually promiscuous, making deemed promiscuity not only
needless but also inappropriate.
Having recognised this concept of deemed promiscuity, how should we interpret porneia in Mat. 5:32
and 19:9? The options for the word seem to be the two we have given our attention to: a) actual
promiscuity or b) deemed promiscuity.
The actual promiscuity option has little to commend it, other than perhaps that it is the most literal
interpretation, and the most common meaning of the word porneia. Normally porneia means
prostitution. This is the context of the problems in 1 Cor. 6-7 when Christian men were going to pagan
temples and eating meat sacrificed to idols and having sexual intercourse with temple prostitutes. But
that is not the context or the likely meaning here. It is incredibly unlikely that the Lord was ruling that
for adultery a man may not divorce his wife, but if she becomes a prostitute, then you can divorce her
and marry another.
This leaves the deemed promiscuity option. But, as we saw, this applies to unmarried women: actual
adultery is never deemed to be promiscuity. That is needless and inappropriate in the case of adultery,
as well as being unprecedented and unsupported.
As a grounds for or as a scenario allowing divorce, deemed promiscuity must mean that the woman
was guilty of deemed promiscuity before she got married to the man, when she was an unmarried
woman. This, in turn, requires that we are dealing with a defect in the marriage contracting process:
the woman was misrepresented as a virgin when she had been “whoring in her father’s house” before
the betrothal and was only discovered on the wedding consummation. This gets us back to the
scenario in defamed bride case in the Torah, which is where we should have got anyway from paying
proper attention to the word logos in Mat. 5:32 as discussed in the previous section of this review.
Post-wedding Divorce for Adultery?
Notwithstanding the assumptions made that divorce was the known and standard remedy after the
wedding for a wife’s adultery, the biblical data does not provide any support for this. As stated by
Keener, “the narrative potions of the Bible often show us how to apply the principles we read in the
other parts of the Bible are to be applied.” (p. 22) The biblical data includes vast amounts of both law
and narrative, covering many centuries of history, and not everything narrated is given to approve
what was narrated. Yet there are exactly zero cases of post-wedding divorce for adultery in the Bible.
Before the wedding, no claim or proof of adultery is necessary for divorce. After the wedding, no claim
or proof of adultery is demonstrated sufficient for divorce by a single example in the Bible.
The standard counterexample to this assessment is that YHWH divorced Israel for her adultery. Israel
was betrothed to YHWH, and she was divorced for both adultery and promiscuity, but Israel never
attained her wedding and consummation of her marriage to YHWH. Before she was divorced, she had
not entered into her “rest” with her husband (Heb. 4), of the ratified and consummated marital state.7
7
Israel’s gift of children from YHWH in Ez. 16 amounts to population increase (e.g. see Deut. 28 and the blessings
for obedience to the covenant), as a betrothal gift or a betrothal period gift, and does not indicate that the
marriage had been ratified and consummated. Likewise, Israel’s gift of the land of Canaan was only held on
leasehold by Israel, and her possession of it did not indicate that Israel had fulfilled her purpose and
Deut. 24:1-4 does not state that the marriage was ratified by the wedding nor consummated, and the
only clear case for its application is during the betrothal period (both by YHWH against Israel, noted
above, and as intended by Joseph against Mary in Mat. 1:18-19). We address Deut. 24:1-4 in detail
later in this review.
By contrast, men who suspected their wives of adultery after the wedding were left with the
procedure of the bitter water in Num. 5:11-31. This procedure is the only procedure provided by the
Torah that was usable for post-wedding adultery cases since proof by two eyewitnesses to the capital
standard was impossible. Yet, the procedure sends the suspected adulterous wife back home to her
husband to make up, make love and make babies! The jealousy and the uncertainty and iniquity are
dealt with without death, without violence, without harm and without divorce.
The idea of post-wedding divorce for adultery is simply not supported by the Biblical texts,
notwithstanding claims and assumptions to the contrary. Likewise for the claim that, post adultery, it
would be offensive and unacceptable for a man to take his wife back or to have sexual intercourse
with her anymore. Although this idea can be supported by data from later periods, it is absent from
the Old Testament and men take back their wives when they are defiled after the wedding.
When we see claims that divorce for adultery was standard, we need to step back and take a more
sceptical and careful look at the data and ask ourselves more seriously what the correct approach
should be. The correct approach needs to address the conflicting demands of identity and loyalty to a
wife as one’s own flesh on the one hand, and the threat to the man’s status by the woman’s
unfaithfulness – and by the surrounding circumstances of the wife’s unfaithfulness. The main response
indicated in the Old Testament is to vent one’s fury against the other man (Pr. 6:25-35) to restore the
lost status and to get back the wife’s exclusive affections. This is not a straightforward issue, and the
attitudes of many of the Lord’s contemporaries should not be uncritically accepted nor presumed to
have been followed by the Lord and his Apostles.
The Exception Clause in Mat. 19:9
As Keener comments (p. 43), we are to interpret the exception clause in Mat. 19:9 based on the correct
understanding of it in Mat. 5:32. Although the word logos is not present in Mat. 19:9, in the context
consummated her relationship with YHWH. These betrothal gifts and betrothal period gifts were conditional and
were taken away when Israel broke the covenant and YHWH divorced her. These gifts were also symbolic and
typical of the true spiritual realities to be received only on Israel’s re-betrothal and her consummation of her
new marriage covenant with YHWH. It is a mistake to construe these symbolic and typological gifts as being the
true consummation of Israel’s covenant with YHWH, which only happens at the wedding feast of Is. 25:6-8;
65:13-15; Mat. 8:10-12; 22:1-14 when the old body of Israel is judged and destroyed and the new body of Israel
inherits the true promised land in heaven (Heb. 11:16).
of Matthew’s gospel and the topic of divorce, the intended reference to the porneia case of Deut.
22:13-21 is adequately clear.
Keener’s approach to translating the text of Mat. 19:9 betrays his reading in of his own interpretation
into the text: “except on the grounds of her immorality” (p. 43, emphasis added). The literal translation
is “except for prostitution” where the word “for” (Greek: epi) does not mean “grounds” as in legal
grounds, nor “charge” (as per the question in the context “for any charge?” Mat. 19:3). The term is a
simple preposition, which can be a set up for reference to the porneia case in Deut. 22:13-21 (with all
its circumstances and policies) as in Mat. 5:32 with “logos porneia.”
Hardness of Heart – misreading the function of the Torah
Likewise, Keener’s translation of Mat. 19:8 “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives to
accommodate the hardness of your hearts” (p. 42, emphasis added). More literally the text is “Moses,
because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives.”
Whether the law was to accommodate rather than to remedy the hardness of their hearts, “as a
concession to human weakness” (p. 42), is something Keener must argue, it cannot simply be
assumed. In the defamed bride case we looked at before, the law was given not to accommodate
defamation, but to remedy it. In the same way, if the Lord says that Deut. 24:1-4 was given because
of their hardness of hearts, then we cannot just assume this means to accommodate it: the better
reading is if we can find some sensible remedy the law provides that is appropriate to address the
problem of “hardness of heart” in the case.
To address the function and treatment of the law in Deut. 24:1-4 we have three exegetical issues to
resolve:
1. What is the hardness of heart for which:
a. the law was given to address and/or
b. the law was given to address by permitting divorces in the case or in such cases?
2. What is the contrast between the law or the scenario in Deut. 24:1-4, and the “from the
beginning of the creation” (Mark 10:6) and/or “he made them at the beginning male and
female” (Mat. 19:4) and “from the beginning but it was not so [afterwards]” (Mat. 19:8). Is
the contrast between God’s law before Moses, and God’s law after (or under) Moses? Or
between the point at which God creates two spouses begin to be “male and female” in a way
that God has joined and man may no longer separate anymore?
3. What is the nature of the creation spoken of at the beginning? How does God’s creative work
“in the beginning” relate to God’s work joining the man together with his wife so that man
may not separate them?
As in the Sermon on the Mount, in this debate context, the assumption should be that the Lord is
upholding the Torah. He should win the debate by proper interpretation and application of the Torah.
The contrast should therefore be between how the Pharisees were applying Deut. 24:1-4 and the
Lord’s correct application, rather than between what Moses wrote and what the Lord taught. Likewise,
we will seek to exegete the original and correct meaning of Gen. 1:27 as it relates to the creation of
marriage in the beginning.
Gen. 1:27 “male and female” refers to means monogamy
The technical or connotative meaning of “male and female” here is as “two” (Gen. 6:19), “pairs … a
male and its mate” (Gen. 7:2), and “two and two” (Gen. 7:9). The animals that entered the ark were
in pairs, each male with its mate, two by two, along with Noah and his one wife, and Noah’s three
sons, each two by two, each with only one wife. This monogamous configuration is in contrast with
the “mighty men” who “took wives as they chose” and who filled the land with violence, and in
contrast with polygynous Lamech who was also a killer, with an attitude of impunity.
This usage of “male and female” here is not the same as “both male and female” (Num. 5:3) where it
refers to both males and females without any pairing and is introduced by the preposition “both” and
it is not the same as various examples of “male or female” referring to either sex rather than to pairs
of one male and one female.
The phrase means the configuration of males and females as one male with one female, in pairs. But
this is not in this configuration that men and women are baptized into the body of Christ and become
sons of God. Regarding such membership: there is no “male and female” as one, rather “you are all
one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:27-28). Just as one is not baptized into the Jewish section of the body or
the Greek section of the body, we are not constituted members of Christ’s body as “male and female”
pairs. Entry into the body by a married man or a married woman does not, by that action, bring his or
her spouse into the body, nor does it dissolve the marriage (1 Cor. 7:12-15). Within the assembly
meetings, however, a married woman prophetess must still respect her own husband, and not act as
if she were single (1 Cor. 11:3-15).
Given that the recognised use of this text is to support monogamy, in effect the Lord rules that divorce
and remarriage results in polygamy: the male is united with one female and becomes “male and
female” and then divorces his wife and marries another, but does not become “male and female” but
“male and females” because he is still united by God to the first female. This usage obviously implies
that the union of a man with his wife as a “male and female” pair is and must be durable.
Gen. 1:27 “male and female” refers to God’s ongoing creative work
“have you not read that he who made at the beginning male and female made them?” (Mat. 19:4)
“but from the beginning of the creation male and female God made them?” (Mark 10:6)
In these texts we can see that the Lord is referring to God’s creative work in making couples “male
and female.”
God’s creative work here can be understood in two senses:
1. In a general or universal sense, God made the institution of marriage, that society be
composed of households based on pairs consisting of one male and one female each, and
2. In a specific and temporal sense, God made the individual marriage of one male and one
female.
Although the first sense is true, and was completed in the past when the institution of marriage was
established, it is the second sense that is relevant in the argument and the application about those –
referring to each relevant pair of one male and one female – that “God has joined together” (Mat.
19:6; Mark 10:9).
The work of God in joining together male and female in marriage is not God joining males as a group
to females as a group, rather it is the work of joining each pair of a male and a female into a new
creation or as a new creature. In this sense, the work of the sixth day is not finished, and we are not
to view God as resting after that, but as still working, even on the weekly Sabbath (cf. John 5:17-18).
The work of Gen. 1:26-28 includes being fruitful and multiplying household units, which is an ongoing
process (as is imaging God and ruling the animals). The household based on one male and one female
was to produce children which would be members of that same household unit. That unit would then
multiply when those children grew up, as each son left his father and mother and held fast to his one
wife and became a new household and a new family unit with her in society (Gen. 2:24).
Thus, the creative work of the creation of Gen. 1:27 should not be limited to a one-time past act of
creating the institution of marriage. God continues the creative work when he joins together individual
pairs of one male and one female in marriage.
Gen. 1:27 “male and female” refers to the “beginning” of each marriage
Consequently, each individual marriage has a “beginning” when it becomes officially constituted as a
legitimate household unit in society, based on the union of “male and female.” This implies that there
is a creative process that needs to be properly completed before the creation of “male and female” is
accomplished and the couple are launched as a new household unit into society. This creative process
can be broken down into the following normal steps:
1. A father “gives” his daughter to a man who “takes” her as his wife. The man pays her father
the bride price and the parties sign the marriage contract.
2. The husband and wife prepare for and then celebrate the wedding ceremony, to ratify or
confirm their marriage, and to signify the launch of the couple as a new household unit in
society. This generally takes up to about one year from the time that they sign the marriage
contract. The parental households of the spouses generally fund their marital assets that they
will contribute to the spouses at this time, and those funds are then controlled by the spouses
rather than their parents.
3. The husband and wife then consummate their marriage by having sexual intercourse with
each other for the first time and commencing cohabitation. Hopefully they become fruitful
and produce children who will belong to that household unit, and hopefully they can work
and increase their funds to provide for the family’s needs.
After this hopefully the cycle continues as they give their daughters in marriage and take wives for
their sons and sponsor them to depart the household unit and form new households of their own.
These steps, however, are only the normal steps. Sometimes the creation process is aborted, and the
marriage contract is terminated by divorce rather than confirmed by the wedding ceremony. Other
times, the spouses have sexual intercourse before their wedding. Or, they have sexual intercourse first
and then negotiate or receive a marriage contract second.
At what stage does the marriage have its “beginning” in the sense of disallowing subsequent divorce?
Here we have limited biblical data, but we should examine what data we do have. If they have sexual
relations first, and negotiate or receive a marriage contract second, then, from the time that the
marriage contract is put into effect, divorce is no longer possible (Deut. 22:28-29). This suggests that
steps 1 and 3 are required, and that step 2 is optional, and that step 1 can be supplied after step 3,
whether by the court (Deut. 22:28-29) or by the spouses themselves (Gen. 34:1-4) although the courtsupplied contract may be refused by the other party (Ex. 22:16-17). In the cultural context, having
sexual intercourse was, in many circumstances, treated as the offer (and acceptance) of a marriage
contract and therefore equal to a consummated marriage. And we have already examined the
defamed bride case of Deut. 22:13-21 which indicates that step 3 is effective in closing off the
possibility of divorce even if the woman was not a virgin at the time, except in very narrow
circumstances when the man can prove he was defrauded into the betrothal and subject to other
safeguards.
In summary, “the beginning” of when they become “male and female” as a completed creation of
God, after which “man may not separate” them must be when they have a lawful marriage contract
that has been consummated by the two having sexual intercourse with each other, even if the events
do not occur in that order. This corresponds to the time of the social transaction when the two are
launched by their respective parental families to become a new household unit in society.
This analysis shows why this teaching has no objection to divorce before the wedding of an
unconsummated marriage: at this point the creation was not finished, its completed status was not
yet begun.
Deut. 24:1-4 does not apply “from the beginning of creation” of a “male and female”
pair
As noted above, before the beginning of the “male and female” pair in the relevant sense, divorce is
not a problem for the Lord’s teaching or for society or the institution of marriage. As the divorces in
Deut. 24:1-4 occur before “the beginning of creation” of the two by God as a male and female pair,
that law is doing something else. The something else that the Lord identifies is addressing their
“hardness of heart.”
Keener claims that this law was given to give legal protection (p. 43) to the one divorced against her
will who (apparently) should not have been divorced. This reading sees the divorces as not ideal and
probably unfair, and the law as regulating the procedure and providing some protection in a divorce
certificate (Keener doesn’t say how she is protected, but some people have argued that the certificate
serves a protective function, so this is his presumed meaning). However, most scholars today
understand that the law neither regulated nor restricted divorce, it merely restricts one kind of
remarriage: if he divorces her, and she marries someone else, then she cannot marry the first husband
again even if the second marriage ends by the death of the second husband or by him divorcing her
as well.
Given this, a closer examination of what “hardness of heart” means is in order. The term merely refers
to stubbornness, which is the opposite of Keener’s characterisation as “human weakness.” It is human
strength to maintain one’s decision or will, against pressure to relent and change one’s mind. In the
case, the hardness of heart could be in a few different things: was the wife stubbornly breaching the
marriage contract and humiliating her husband? Was the husband stubbornly angry with and repulsed
by the wife so that he goes through with the divorce? Is he stubbornly refusing to take her back after
the divorce? Or is he stubbornly chasing her to get her back after he divorced her and she married
someone else? Given that the Lord links the stubbornness with the permission to divorce,8 it seems
to be the stubbornness to reject the woman, which results both in the first divorce and the failure of
the parties to remarry each other before the woman marries another man. For this stubbornness the
law gives its only remedy: that first husband may not marry her again after she marries another man.
The context in which a man can divorce his wife by merely writing a notice of divorce and giving it to
her bears some examination also. If it seems like easy divorce, that is because this is exactly what it is.
The man’s right to divorce the woman is absolute, and at his own discretion. He is the one who decides
if divorce is justified, and it is he who executes the divorce by mere written notice. In fact, the woman
has no protection at all under this law, contra Keener.
For a young woman, to be married is to have been chosen and esteemed and loved and wanted: to
lose that status by divorce is to be made “barren”, to become “desolate,” “ashamed,” “confounded,”
“disgraced,” “widowed” and “deserted” and “grieved in spirit” (Is. 54:1-6, ESV). A woman who has
been divorced, simply by the fact of her having been divorced, makes her ineligible to marry a priest
(Lev. 21:7), and so the best reading of the case is that the woman is “defiled” (Deut. 24:4) by her first
divorce, rather than by the man’s reason for it or any subsequent sexual intercourse. The man’s
written notice of divorce in the case simply does not function to mitigate the defilement and loss of
status that the woman suffers from his action: it merely effects and certifies it. Contrary to popular
belief, the law does not require the written notice or certificate, and it does not restrict the woman
from divorcing her husband, whether orally,9 in writing or by her conduct,10 nor is there any due
process of law or proving of any grounds in court to protect the wife’s interests.
The only lawful context for a man to divorce his wife entirely at his own discretion and by mere written
notice, as in Deut. 24:1-4, is during the betrothal period. That is the context of the case: the man
“takes” the woman and “marries her” (i.e. he has betrothed her) (step 1 above) but there is no
mention of the wedding ceremony (step 2) or the wedding consummation (step 3). These subsequent
steps are serious and expensive steps that have legal significance: they confirm that the marriage is
for keeps and secure the woman in her status as his wife. They give the wife protection from the
divorce procedure in this case. The case cannot sensibly be read as applying equally before and after
8
In Matthew. In Mark, it is linked with the reason for giving the law.
As in the Jewish marriage contracts from Elephantine where the woman could stand up in the public assembly
and say “I hate my husband” to effect a divorce. This is in great contrast to the situation when the man,
apparently after confirming her to be his for life at the wedding, “evicts” the wife from his “house” (i.e. he
repudiates her and deprives her of her status). This eviction is not lawful and it is not done via an announcement
in the assembly and for breaking his promise at this stage he has to pay more than 26 times as much in damages
(200 shekels rather than 7.5 shekels).
10
For example, by refusing to go through with the wedding or by begging or provoking him to divorce her.
9
the wedding, that would make the wedding give the wife no security at all, a situation as unsatisfactory
as it is unlikely.
The law in Deut. 24:1-4 addresses a woman who was betrothed to a man who then found something
wrong with her so that he didn’t want her to be his wife anymore. This desire and decision for her not
to be his wife anymore was a decision he stubbornly maintained: he divorced her by written notice,
and this made her free to any man, but also a socially defiled her and made her a rejected woman. He
could have taken her back, but he is apparently stubborn in his rejection of her. His divorce of her
freed her to marry another man, but he still could have taken her back. Instead, because of his
stubbornness, she marries another man. He, too, then hates her, or he dies, again freeing her to marry
someone else. It is at this point that the law actually does something: it prohibits her to her first
husband. This is the remedy of the law for the man’s hard-hearted divorce of her and his refusal to
take her back before she married someone else. The law sees something untoward in the man’s later
interest in the woman (exactly what is unclear) and intervenes to stop him.
Accordingly, this law is not a “concession” as claimed by Keener, and the Lord said nothing to revoke
any concession given by Moses. Rather, the Lord distinguished the case: he identified that the law
raised as an objection was given for a different reason and was irrelevant and inapplicable to his ruling
against (post-wedding) divorce.
From a temporal point of view, the whole process of the divorces in Deut. 24:1-4 take place before
the spouses become a “male and female” pair by the creative act of God joining them to each other
such that no man may separate them. As such, there is no contradiction between the Lord’s teaching
and the law in Deut. 24:1-4. That law was given for an earlier stage in the marriage, and for a different
reason.
1 Cor 7 – the usual errors
Keener’s key arguments based on 1 Cor. 7 have the normal errors from those who want to find lawful
reasons for post-wedding divorces. He continues to inject his interpretation into the texts he
translates: “if the marriage partner who does not believe in Christ walks out or terminates the union,
let him go. The Christian brother or sister is not “under bondage” (bound to the marriage) in such
cases” (p. 61). This assumes what Keener is trying to prove: that the divorce initiated by the unbeliever
effectively terminates the union and frees the Christian to remarry.
Based on the Lord’s teachings, the problem with the divorces that he prohibits extends to and results
in divorces that fail to terminate the union, which in turn makes remarriage to anyone else adulterous
while the first union is still in force. Paul’s application to the case of the unbeliever divorcing the
believer is not a ruling that the divorce is lawful, and valid and that it works to terminate the union
and frees the Christian to remarry. Rather, he addresses the question of what the believer should do:
let them go.
The language of being “bound” is more literally “enslaved.” Marriage is not slavery in the cultural
context or in the scriptures. Slavery in the context is the obligation to obey the law of Christ (1 Cor.
7:22). The obligation to obey implies the liability to discipline for disobedience. It is this liability for
discipline that Paul is addressing: the believer is exempt from discipline for the violation for the very
good reason that the violation was at the behest of the unbeliever and beyond the power of the
believer to stop. It is not a sin to be unlawfully divorced, one is not a sinner on account of one’s
divorced status alone. This relief from discipline, however, does not go as far as legalising the divorce
or making it effective or freeing either party to remarry.
Keener’s ignorance of the difference between the betrothal period and after the wedding and
consummation is behind his other major error concerning 1 Cor. 7. Keener argues that 1 Cor. 7:27-28
refers to those bound to a wife, and those subsequently freed from a wife, i.e. divorced (p. 63). Since
these divorced people do not sin if they marry, then remarriage after divorce is not sin and is lawful.
He further argues that Paul only discourages the divorced not to marry, he doesn’t prohibit it. This is
good as far as it goes, however, it neglects the contextual restriction: this section addresses “virgins”
(1 Cor. 7:25) i.e. those who had not consummated their marriages yet or who had never been married.
For other married people, Paul’s text and tone is more absolute: “To the married I give this charge
(not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, she should
remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife.”
(1 Cor. 7:10-11) and “A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives.” (1 Cor. 7:39).
In conclusion, Keener’s concern for those innocently divorced at best deserves only qualified support.
A person should not be disciplined merely for being a divorced person or suffering a divorce that they
were not responsible for or could not stop. The sins of divorce are forgivable, even if the person was
grievously responsible for breaking a marriage or for unforgiveness or refusing reconciliation. But it
does not follow that a lawful and valid marriage – after the wedding and after consummation – are
set aside or dissolved by man’s unlawful divorce actions, or that later unions in violation of such
lifelong ties can be exempted from the Lord’s adultery rulings applicable to such cases.
There is no “oppression” in advising or ruling that a marriage is still in force and that it is an
impediment to another marriage. A faithful obedience to the Lord’s teaching and commands requires
us to treat marriage as he did: a formal legal status with important and lifelong requirements that
need to be respected, not just by the parties, but by the legal system and in his church.