Some Pharisees came up to Jesus, testing Him, and began to question Him whether it was lawful for a man to divorce a wife. And He answered and said to them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.” But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, and the two shall become one flesh; so they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” Mark 10:2-9
From the beginning, biblical positions have been put on the stand. In Jesus’ day the Pharisees played the part of a shrewd prosecuting attorney, seeking to entrap him with their diabolical questions. The Lord was, of course, aware of their evil motives and played them like a fiddle.
The question of divorce was supposed to be the tripwire to destroy Jesus’ credibility. But citing the origin of man and woman and God’s intent for them to permanently unite as one flesh isolated man’s hardness of heart as the principal cause for divorce and Moses’ certificate of divorce as an accommodation for man’s willfulness.
In the end the Lord’s detractors must argue against settled law, and Jesus added the founder’s intent!
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