When Jesus spoke about divorce and remarriage, he was pushing back against male-privileged interpretations of Deuteronomy 24

Post updated August-Nov 2025, and updated again in Nov 2026.

In Matthew 19, when Jesus was speaking about divorce and remarriage, he was addressing only the ways that the Jewish religious leaders in his day were misinterpreting Deuteronomy 24:1. He was pushing back against male-privileged rabbinic interpretations of Deuteronomy 24:1.

Clearly Jesus knew the two Mosaic Laws which give dignity and rights to women in marriage and divorce (Exodus 21 and Deuteronomy 21) but each time Jesus spoke about divorce and remarriage, he didn’t specifically bring up those laws.

• Exodus 21 authorises an abused wife to divorce a hard-hearted husband
• Deuteronomy 21 gives dignity and rights to wives in both marriage and divorce

I reckon Jesus was also well aware of the fact that Malachi 2:16 said If a man hates his wife he should set her free from the marriage and compensate her for the suffering he has caused her.

Each of the four times Jesus spoke about divorce he focused on the false doctrines about divorce which male religious leaders had invented to advantage themselves.

Every time Jesus spoke about divorce, he focused his laser on the misogyny of the Jewish rabbis, and the callous conduct of men who believed they were entitled to mistreat their wives.

Deuteronomy 24 does not specify what is (or is not) a legitimate ground for divorce. In Deuteronomy 24:1-4, Moses didn’t spell out legitimate grounds for divorce, he only prohibited a particular type of remarriage.

Here is the beginning of verse 1:

When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some uncleanness in her… (NKJ)

A man who says he found some uncleanness in his wife might be lying, or he might be telling the truth.

In the Hebrew of Deuteronomy 24:1, “he has found” is the verb ma.tsa (qal perfective). That same verb ma.tsa (in the qal perfective form) occurs twice in the law about the man who deliberately lies to defame his wife’s good character. The man says, “I found no tokens of my wife’s virginity!” but the evidence is brought forth and it proves he was lying (Deuteronomy 22:13-17).

Everyone knows the man in Deuteronomy 22 man was lying. Why do they find it so hard to consider the possibility that the man in Deuteronomy 24:1 may have been lying?

Why don’t they factor in the possibility that this hypothetical man in Deuteronomy 24 may have been unjustly maligning his wife? 

Most if not all Christian leaders and commentators have assumed that the man in Deuteronomy 24:1 must have been telling the truth in claiming to have found ‘some uncleanness’ in his wife. And they conclude that his wife must have done something sinful which justly merited divorce. This assumption has led to many false ideas.

Here are some of the false ideas which have come from this assumption. I will strike through each of the false ideas, because I don’t want any of my readers to think they are true statements.

• In Deuteronomy 24 Moses expressly permitted divorce for adultery across the board, for both men and women whose spouses had been sexually unfaithful.
• In Deuteronomy 24, Moses expressly licensed men to divorce adulterous wives.
• Jesus agreed with the Shammaites’ claim that Deuteronomy 24:1 allowed a man to divorce an adulterous wife.
• Jesus annulled the Mosaic concession for divorce.
• Jesus said the innocent partner may only divorce when their spouse has been serially and repeatedly adulterous and extremely hard-hearted.
• Jesus taught that adultery is the only ground for divorce, and that trumps everything else the Bible says about divorce.

Here is what Moses DID do in Deuteronomy 24:1. He tolerated men divorcing their wives. He suffered men divorcing their wives.

Here is what Moses did three verses later. He said that if a man divorces his wife and she enters another marriage and that marriage also terminates, the first husband MUST NOT REMARRY the wife he had declared ‘unclean’ when he divorced her. Moses said if a man did that it would bring sin on the land. 

In verse 4, the verb about the woman being defiled, ta.me (H2930A), has a Hothpaal stem. (To verify, go to Step Bible and click on the word to show the word analysis.)

The Hothpaal stem is a variation of the Piel and generally expresses verbal action in passive voice. The Hothpaal stem is formed from the Hithpael stem by vowel changes and is an extremely rare stem formation in Biblical Hebrew.
— unfoldingWord® Hebrew Grammar

Below is some of the Step Bible’s Word Analysis of ta.me (H2930A). It doesn’t show Hothapaal, perhaps because it is so rare, but for Piel it includes the meaning to pronounce unclean, declare unclean.

1c) (Piel)

1c1a) sexually
1c1b) religiously
1c1c) ceremonially

1c2) to pronounce unclean, declare unclean (ceremonially)

1e (Hithpael) to be unclean

The first husband pronounced his wife unclean. He declared her unclean. I think the meaning of verse 4 becomes clear if people will just take off their male-privilege lenses.

He declared her unclean, so he is not allowed to remarry her after she’s been married to another. She is only off limits to him.

Since he’s now contemplating remarrying her, we know he’d unfairly maligned her when he claimed to have found something ‘unclean’ in her, an unspecified thing that was so reprehensible that he was right to cast her off. (I can picture him sitting in the gate with the elders, his back straight and his chest puffed out, sadly shaking his head like he’s such a moral man, and portentously signing the divorce certificate. Then he goes home to his wife, hands her the divorce certificate with no one watching, and smirks at her. He’s dumped her, and she can do nothing about it.)

In casting her off, the first husband had unjustly stigmatised her in the eyes of the community and now he has to endure the consequences.

Any other man may marry her. She isn’t to be considered ‘unclean’ by any other man or woman.

When writing my book, I figured this out by ethical principles alone. I only found out about the Hothpaal stem in November 2026, eighteen years after publishing my book. The Hothpaal stem confirms what I wrote in my book. The Hothpaal expresses verbal action in passive voice. Although the verb ta.me has a feminine ending in verse four, the fact that the Hothpaal expresses verbal action in the passive voice shows that the woman had something done to her. She wasn’t the actor, she was the recipient of the action. In marrying the second man she didn’t ‘defile herself’ or make herself unclean. The first husband pronounced her unclean, and she suffered the stigma of his pronouncement.

In casting her off, the first husband had unjustly stigmatised her in the eyes of the community and now he has to endure the consequences!

Here are a few English translations that partly convey this meaning (emphasis mine):

She has become unclean to him. (ERV)

her first husband, who sent her away, cannot take her again as his wife after she was stigmatized as impure, because that would be detestable to the Lord. (EHV)

her first husband is not to marry her again; he is to consider her defiled. If he married her again, it would be offensive to the Lord. (GNT) 

How my reading of Deuteronomy 24 relates to Jesus’ debate with the Pharisees.

In Matthew 19 and Mark 10, the Pharisees tried to entangle Jesus in a debate about whether a man could divorce his wife for ‘any matter’ / ‘any cause’ — i.e., no-fault divorce for men.

When the Pharisees posed a trap question to Jesus, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?” they were alluding to a dispute between two rabbinic schools, the School of Hillel (Hillelites), and the School of Shammai (Shammaites).

The phrase ‘any cause’ was code for the Hillelite’s interpretation of Deuteronomy 24:1. The Jewish bystanders would have all have known this. Every adult present that day would have known that Jesus was only being asked about how the rabbis were interpreting Deuteronomy 24:1 in order to justify divorce for men.

Both Hillelites and Shammaites assumed the first verse of Deuteronomy chapter 24 was an entitling law which expressly permitted a man to divorce his wife. The only difference between the two schools was this: Hillelites said it allowed a man to divorce his wife for ‘any cause,’ whereas Shammaites said it allowed and commanded men to divorce wives who committed adultery and behaviour inviting adultery. (The alleged sexual immorality had to be proven in a court of law, before judges).

Many Christians think Jesus admonished the Hillelites, and agreed with the Shammaites. But I challenge that notion.

I believe Jesus was admonishing BOTH schools of rabbis. 

I lay out my detailed arguments for this here.

As far as I’m aware, I am the only person who has challenged the standard interpretation of the divorce debate between the Pharisees and Jesus in Matthew 19 and Mark 10.

I am convinced that Christians have misunderstood this debate between Jesus and the Pharisees. The misunderstanding has been the ‘standard teaching’ for many hundreds of years. Like a limpet that clings to a rock, the misunderstanding is very hard to dislodge.

I want us to prise the misunderstanding off the rock and pulverise it like Moses destroyed the golden calf!

Male bias and male privilege

When the disciples heard Jesus telling the Pharisees that remarriage after a Hillelite divorce is adultery, their first reaction was shock: “If that is the case, it is better not to marry!” (Matthew 19:10). I suggest they were reacting out of their own male privilege. (It seems they later came to understand how Jesus was admonishing the Pharisees, after they’d got over their shock. Jesus probably had to walk them through it slowly. And perhaps they only really ‘got it’ when the Holy Spirit descended at Pentecost.)

For millennia, men have been interpreting Scripture through their own lens. The lens of male experience and their presumptions about male privilege.

By twisting small elements of Scripture and then magnifying those twists to advantage themselves, privileged men have made virtually everyone think that their lens is the only lens to see through.

The reason I specify men is because men have been the dominant voices in scriptural interpretation.

Men’s viewpoints have dominated the interpretation of God’s Word for the last few millennia. There are many reasons for this, some of which spring from the biological differences between men and women.

Ever since the Fall, men have had advantages (and burdens) that women have not had.

Men do not menstruate; men do not have wombs. Men haven’t had to suffer the pain and difficulty of blood coming from their genitals every month. Men haven’t had to suckle crying babies in the middle of the night. Men have never died in childbirth. Men haven’t been raped nearly as often as women have been raped.

I recognise that countless men have lost their lives in dangerous workplaces and on battlefields (especially when the battles were organised by fools and psychopaths). I recognise that until very recently in human history, men have been the chief breadwinners. By the sweat of their brow, men have busted their guts to put food on the table for their families.

But by and large, men have been enjoyed more social advantages and privileges than women. For an example, just google medical misogyny. Or read my post The woman’s desire in Genesis 3:16 — let’s be consistent with the context and with actual life.

I submit that men’s advantages have a led to men’s viewpoints dominating the interpretation of what scripture says about divorce.

The Pharisees in Jesus’ day interpreted the Old Testament through their male-biased lenses.

Christian leaders, most of whom have been privileged men, have interpreted the divorce question through their own biased lenses. There is nothing new under the sun.

The trick is to stop playing their game. Rather than asking why the Bible doesn’t use the exact words “abuse is grounds for divorce,” I recommend identifying and exposing the contradictions in the biased interpretations (and the mistranslations) — and then blowing them away by showing that both the Old and New Testaments allow a mistreated spouse to divorce an abusive spouse, and the mistreated spouse is then free to remarry without incurring guilt. Read more here.

The mistaken view that “Jesus said adultery is the only ground for divorce” fits very nicely with men’s priorities. The belief that men’s sexual needs get priority has been around ever since the Fall. Here are some expressions of the idea that men’s sexual needs get priority: (1) the idea that the husband owns the wife and can order her around; (2) the double standard about women’s virginity while men can sow their wild oats; and (3) men believing they have the right to rape their wives.

The false idea that Jesus said adultery is the only ground for divorce has very much suited men. It has enabled abusive husbands to claim the high moral ground by not divorcing their wives, while abused wives come under suspicion if they even contemplate divorcing their abusers. And if women do divorce their abusers they often get besmirched and shunned by the church. (See here for an example.)

For readers who have been wondering why I’ve been pretty inactive on this blog for so long, I have been working through a lot of trauma, old and new. I’m getting EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) from a mental health professional who is trained in treating trauma. Thanks to her suggestions and professional experience, I’ve had many insights into why my life has been so hard and what I can do to recover and heal from the traumas I’ve suffered.

God is exposing more and more abusers who have been hiding out in the churches. It is encouraging to see this happening, but it can be pretty emotionally intense, especially for those of us whom the predators have preyed on. May we all cling to the Lord, trusting that even when we have no strength, and seemingly no way of escape from the predators, Jesus will carry us and hold us even when we can’t feel Him. May the Lord come quickly!

There are two kingdoms. We may be persecuted and tortured in this fallen world, but this world is coming to an end. When God winds up this world like a scroll, all who love and cling to Jesus will see justice and enjoy abundant eternal life in the New Heavens and New Earth.