27th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (B)

For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother [and be joined to his wife]. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.

Mk 10: 2-12 

v. 2. The Pharisees approached and asked, “Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?” They were testing him.

Pharisees:

The reference to them is omitted by a number of important MSS., probably rightly. In that case the verb is an impersonal plural of the type so common in Mark, and we should translate: 'the question was put to him….'

Test:

The Greek word (peirazein) can mean simply to 'test' in the sense of seeking to elicit the truth about something or it can mean 'tempt', i.e. test in the hope of eliciting some damning admission. St Mark no doubt understood it here in the second sense. Jesus was to be brought into open conflict with the Law or discredited in the eyes of Herod. But just possibly the question which gave rise to the incident in its original form was a quite straightforward one designed to elicit Jesus' views on a much-debated question in contemporary ethics.

On the content of the question it will have been a particularly pertinent one in Rome, where divorce was easy and constantly occurred. But the wording suggests that in the present form of the question it originated in Jewish-Christian circles, for it does not seem to contemplate a woman divorcing her husband (contrast v. 12). This was possible according to Roman Law, but not according to Jewish Law.

v. 5. But Jesus told them, “Because of the hardness of your hearts he wrote you this commandment.

Hardness of heart (sklerokardia):

Some commentators take “hard” here to mean 'rough' or 'coarse' and think of 'the rude nature which belongs to a, primitive civilization'. The implication then is that the words express a merciful concession for the woman's sake. But perhaps we should think rather of unteachableness, stubborn refusal to obey God's will as revealed in Genesis. The implication is that the Mosaic Law was in certain cases a kind of second best. The highest law could not, or would not, have been obeyed. So there was a concession made to human weakness or 'hardness'. The divorce enactment was not a law but a dispensation.

Did Jesus suppose that with his coming this dispensation lost all its validity, or did he think that where men - even the sons of the kingdom - failed to live up to the divine will in its fullness, some such dispensation was still the best way of dealing with the situation? It is difficult to say how far his view may have been influenced by his belief that this world of 'marrying and giving in marriage' had only a very short time to last (9:1). Much will depend on whether we regard vv. 11-12 as detailed legislation or whether we take it as a vivid way of expressing God's absolute will in this matter.

v. 7. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother [and be joined to his wife].

For this reason:

Refers in Gn. 2:4 to the woman's origin from Adam's rib, but by a piece of exegesis reminiscent of the rabbis Jesus makes it refer to something different - the fact (in Gn.1:27) that the human race was created from the beginning in two sexes. It was because God originally made them male and female that a man will leave father and mother and cleave to his wife and the two will become one flesh. There is reason to think that Gn. 1:7 was currently quoted in support of monogamy, as opposed to polygamy. But it appears to have been original to Jesus to see it as prohibiting divorce. His argument no doubt was that if marriage makes a man and his wife one flesh, it clearly creates a relationship between them as real and as indissoluble as that which binds a man to his relations by blood (v. 8b and cf; Gen. 29:14).

v. 9. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.

Man:

In antithesis to God, this could mean simply any human authority. But in fact is is no doubt the husband who is contemplated, for neither in Jewish nor in Roman law were the parties divorced by any extraneous authority. In Jewish Law the man divorced his wife, in Roman law either party could divorce the other.

vv. 11-12. He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

St. Mark probably understood these verses simply as crystallizing in clear-cut terms the truths inherent in vv. 2-9, though strictly interpreted they add something new. To divorce your wife is a sin, but it is not adultery. If in addition to divorcing her, you marry another woman, then you add the sin of adultery to the sin of divorce.