Marriage & Divorce

Does the Law of Moses allows divorce?
In the days of Moses there was a widespread practice for men to divorce their wives over sometimes quite trivial matters. The wives unfortunately had no power to divorce their husbands and were therefore at their mercy. Moses told Godʼs people that divorce in Godʼs eyes was wrong but because the practice was so widespread he could not stop it completely. Moses instead gave strict guidelines to the men on what they must do if they desired a divorce in order to protect the wives from the whimsical attitudes of their husbands.
Mosaic Divorce Guidelines
The husband wishing to divorce his wife was required by mosaic law to give his wife written divorce papers and to go through legal proceedings to estab- lish the grounds for divorce. He could no longer divorce his wife on a whim. The divorce papers protected the divorced wife by enabling her to remarry.
What was the trap the pharisees were setting for Jesus?
In the days of Jesus there were two main rabbinical schools of thoughts or camps on the subject of divorce. The school of ʻShammaiʼ taught that the only reason for divorce was adultery and was punishable by death. Hillel's school recognized the most trifling cause as enough for divorce, e.g. the wife's burn- ing the husband's food in cooking. The pharisees wanted to entangle Jesus in the dispute between the two school.
Jesus responds to the pharisees question by asking them to consider Godʼs primal law in Genesis!
Jesus pointed out to the pharisees that Moses only tolerated divorce because of ʻthe hardness of their heartsʼ and that Godʼs primal law states no one should break what God has joined together. Jesusʼ answer confounded both camps. The whole subject of divorce is not fully addressed by Jesus in this exchange with the pharisees as they are not genuinely interested in His answer. Jesus continued His teaching with the disciples alone and St.Paul also addressed the subject in his epistles.
SJO