What is the meaning of Matthew 19:7? Why then, • The Pharisees seize on Jesus’ appeal to Genesis 2:24 (Matthew 19:4-6; Mark 10:6-9) and immediately look for an exception. • “Why then” signals a challenge: if God made marriage permanent, how do they explain the allowance for divorce in the Law? • Their question is less about understanding God’s heart and more about justifying a practice they already approve (compare Matthew 19:3; Luke 10:29). they asked, • These religious leaders approach not as humble learners but as testers (Matthew 19:3). • Scripture often shows questioners exposing their motives by the very way they ask (Genesis 3:1; Luke 20:20). • The plural “they” reminds us that cultural consensus can still oppose God’s design (Romans 12:2). did Moses order, • They appeal to Moses’ authority, assuming Jesus will concede (John 5:45-47). • Yet what Moses actually did in Deuteronomy 24:1-4 was regulate a broken situation, not command divorce. Jesus will soon clarify, “Moses permitted you… because your hearts were hard” (Matthew 19:8). • This moment echoes other times when people misread allowance as approval (1 Samuel 8:7; Acts 17:30). a man to give his wife a certificate of divorce, • The certificate protected the woman from false accusations and allowed her to remarry (Deuteronomy 24:1; Jeremiah 3:8). • Jesus’ contemporaries had turned that safeguard into a loophole for quick divorces, ignoring God’s intent (Malachi 2:16; Matthew 5:31-32). • Notice the phrase centers on what the man does; the law never celebrated the breakup, it merely limited further harm. and send her away? • “Send her away” exposes the relational rupture and the vulnerability it created for wives in ancient culture (Ruth 1:8-9; 1 Corinthians 7:10-11). • God’s original design knows nothing of casual dismissal; separation was a concession to sin, never a divine ideal (Matthew 19:8-9). • In Scripture, sending away often pictures exile from covenant blessing (Genesis 3:23; Isaiah 50:1), underscoring the gravity of divorce. summary Matthew 19:7 records the Pharisees’ attempt to pit Moses against Jesus by citing Deuteronomy 24. They frame Moses’ regulation as a command, hoping to justify easy divorce. Jesus will answer that Moses only permitted it because of hardened hearts, reaffirming that from the beginning God intended one-flesh permanence. The verse therefore exposes a legalistic reading that misses the Creator’s loving purpose for marriage. |
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