Divorce as an impurity

After Jesus made his comments on the unjust dishonest steward and the importance of being faithful, “The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they scoffed at him.” In response, Jesus in 5 verses made a number of controversy sayings ending with "Every one who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery” (Lk. 16:18). I write to suggest that Jesus is in fact saying that the Pharisees, who perhaps are offended by the allegations against the temple priests, have also deviated from right or moral principles or conduct.

In Judaism, sin was viewed as an impurity. There are two kinds of impurity: ritual or moral. Klawans has shown that the concern of Ezra about Gentiles was moral impurity. I do mean to suggest that Jesus is in fact saying that the Pharisees, who perhaps are offended by the allegations against the temple priests, have also deviated from right or moral principles by their conduct and/or teachings on divorce. This is perhaps the only way to understand the parables about the corrupt temple establishment and the seemingly out of place sayings between the parables in Chapter 16. Lee Dahn has suggested that the divorce saying of Jesus is to be contrasted with the directive of Ezra.

After Ezra and his company arrived in Jerusalem, Ezra was informed that some of the Jerusalem priests have married foreigners. Ezra directed that a genealogy be prepared of everyone. Apparently approximately 100 priest and 10 laymen had married foreigners. Ezra assembled the community, read the Book to them and directed that the 110 priests and laymen divorce their spouses forthwith. In Ezra 9-10, intermarriage with foreigners is viewed as a defilement of the holy race and as unfaithfulness to God (9:2; 10:2, 10). Ezra and his community believed that intermarriage constituted a defilement of the “holy seed” that corrupted the holy land and had to be eliminated to protect the land of Israel.

Linnemann has asserted that “a firmly established result of recent parable interpretation is that the parables of Jesus refer to the historical situation in which they are told.” After Jesus made his comments on the unjust dishonest steward and the importance of being faithful, “The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they scoffed at him.” Consequently in response, Jesus must have been aware that some of the Pharisees in his audience were urging those who had married foreigners to divorce their spouse but unlike Ezra he said: "Every one who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery” (Lk. 16:18). I say must be aware because the only way one can compare the corruption of the temple priests to the corruption of the Pharisees is to point out that their advocacy of divorce of those married to foreigners is just as bad as stealing from the Temple. No group in Judaism had ever suggested that divorce or divorce and remarriage created an impurity that corrupted the holy land. Yet, this is the sense of the radical statement made by the Lucan Jesus.

When two prohibitions seemingly conflict, which controls? Ezra said the prohibition on intermarriage controls. Malachi rebukes Israel for profaning the Mosaic covenant (Mal 2:10-16). One example is the breaking of the marriage covenant by divorcing the wife of their youth. The MT translates the 14^th verse as: “Because the Lord was witness to the covenant between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.” The Septuagint has “whom you abandoned.” Jesus said the divorce and remarriage was tantamount to adultery. The penalty for adultery was death by stoning.

Jesus was able to make this statement in Luke 16:18 using a pesher ‘This is that’ argument before a Jewish audience, which we find elsewhere in Luke with the “finger of God,” because he had already commented on the faithful steward in chapter 12. Jesus was now suggesting that the faithful unfaithful analogy can also be applied to the unfaithless husband (MT) who divorces his wife and marries another thus committing adultery. Jesus has recognized that as a result of the corruption, including impurity caused by divorce, the Temple no longer existed as a House of God. Jesus in effect adopted the viewpoint of the Books of Joel, Ruth, Jonah and Malachi which were a reaction to the reforms and visions of Ezra and Nehemiah of separateness of the people of Judah from the other people of the world.

The pesher argument is possible if one understands the comparison using the MT text. Several verses later the famous passage from Malachi (MT), “Behold, I send my messenger before thy face” appears in Luke 7:27. Therefore it seems reasonable to base the pesher argument on the MT text of Malachi 2:14. Not only does the Book of Ezra solve a translation problem in the Parable of the Unjust Steward, it also assists us in understanding the pesher argument utilized by Jesus.

Copyrighted 2007

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Gospel of Luke