Matthew 19:8-9

19:8 Jesus ¹  said to them, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because of your hard hearts, ²  but from the beginning it was not this way. 19:9 Now I say to you that whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another commits adultery.”

Malachi 2:14-16

2:14 Yet you ask, “Why?” The Lord is testifying against you on behalf of the wife you married when you were young, ³  to whom you have become unfaithful even though she is your companion and wife by law. ⁴  2:15 No one who has even a small portion of the Spirit in him does this. ⁵  What did our ancestor ⁶  do when seeking a child from God? Be attentive, then, to your own spirit, for one should not be disloyal to the wife he took in his youth. ⁷  2:16 “I hate divorce,” ⁸  says the Lord God of Israel, “and the one who is guilty of violence,” ⁹  says the Lord who rules over all. “Pay attention to your conscience, and do not be unfaithful.”

Mark 10:5-12

10:5 But Jesus said to them, “He wrote this commandment for you because of your hard hearts. ¹⁰  10:6 But from the beginning of creation he ¹¹  made them male and female. ¹²  10:7 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother, ¹³  10:8 and the two will become one flesh. ¹⁴  So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 10:9 Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

10:10 In the house once again, the disciples asked him about this. 10:11 So ¹⁵  he told them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. 10:12 And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” ¹⁶ 

Luke 16:18

16:18 “Everyone who divorces his wife and marries ¹⁷  someone else commits adultery, and the one who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.

Romans 7:3

7:3 So then, ¹⁸  if she is joined to another man while her husband is alive, she will be called an adulteress. But if her ¹⁹  husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she is joined to another man, she is not an adulteress.

Romans 7:1

The Believer’s Relationship to the Law

7:1 Or do you not know, brothers and sisters ²⁰  (for I am speaking to those who know the law), that the law is lord over a person ²¹  as long as he lives?

Colossians 1:4

1:4 since ²²  we heard about your faith in Christ Jesus and the love that you have for all the saints.

Colossians 1:10-11

1:10 so that you may live ²³  worthily of the Lord and please him in all respects ²⁴  – bearing fruit in every good deed, growing in the knowledge of God, 1:11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for the display of ²⁵  all patience and steadfastness, joyfully

[19:8]  ¹ tc A few important mss (א Φ pc) have the name “Jesus” here, but it is probably not original. Nevertheless, this translation routinely specifies the referents of pronouns to improve clarity, so that has been done here.

[19:8]  ² tn Grk “heart” (a collective singular).

[2:14]  ³ tn Heb “the Lord is a witness between you and [between] the wife of your youth.”

[2:14]  ⁴ sn Though there is no explicit reference to marriage vows in the OT (but see Job 7:13; Prov 2:17; Ezek 16:8), the term law (Heb “covenant”) here asserts that such vows or agreements must have existed. References to divorce documents (e.g., Deut 24:1-3; Jer 3:8) also presuppose the existence of marriage documents.

[2:15]  ⁵ tn Heb “and not one has done, and a remnant of the spirit to him.” The very elliptical nature of the statement suggests it is proverbial. The present translation represents an attempt to clarify the meaning of the statement (cf. NASB).

[2:15]  ⁶ tn Heb “the one.” This is an oblique reference to Abraham who sought to obtain God’s blessing by circumventing God’s own plan for him by taking Hagar as wife (Gen 16:1-6). The result of this kind of intermarriage was, of course, disastrous (Gen 16:11-12).

[2:15]  ⁷ sn The wife he took in his youth probably refers to the first wife one married (cf. NCV “the wife you married when you were young”).

[2:16]  ⁸ tc The verb שָׂנֵא (sane’) appears to be a third person form, “he hates,” which makes little sense in the context, unless one emends the following word to a third person verb as well. Then one might translate, “he [who] hates [his wife] [and] divorces her…is guilty of violence.” A similar translation is advocated by M. A. Shields, “Syncretism and Divorce in Malachi 2,10-16,” ZAW 111 (1999): 81-85. However, it is possible that the first person pronoun אָנֹכִי (’anokhi, “I”) has accidentally dropped from the text after כִּי (ki). If one restores the pronoun, the form שָׂנֵא can be taken as a participle and the text translated, “for I hate” (so NAB, NASB, NRSV, NLT).

[2:16]  ⁹ tn Heb “him who covers his garment with violence” (similar ASV, NRSV). Here “garment” is a metaphor for appearance and “violence” a metonymy of effect for cause. God views divorce as an act of violence against the victim.

[10:5]  ¹⁰ tn Grk “heart” (a collective singular).

[10:6]  ¹¹ tc Most mss have ὁ θεός (Jo qeo", “God”) as the explicit subject of ἐποίησεν (epoihsen, “he made”; A D W Θ Ψ Ë^1,13 Ï lat sy), while the most important witnesses, along with a few others, lack ὁ θεός (א B C L Δ 579 2427 co). On the one hand, it is possible that the shorter reading is an assimilation to the wording of the LXX of Gen 1:27b where ὁ θεός is lacking. However, since it is mentioned at the beginning of the verse (Gen 1:27a) with ἐποίησεν scribes may have been motivated to add it in Mark to make the subject clear. Further, confusion could easily arise in this dominical saying, because Moses was the previously mentioned subject (v. 5) and inattentive readers might regard him as the subject of ἐποίησεν in v. 6. Thus, both on internal and external grounds, the most probable wording of the original text here lacked ὁ θεός.

[10:6]  ¹² sn A quotation from Gen 1:27; 5:2.

[10:7]  ¹³ tc ‡ The earliest witnesses, as well as a few other important mss (א B Ψ 892* 2427 sy^s), lack the rest of the quotation from Gen 2:24, “and will be united with his wife.” Most mss ([A C] D [L N] W [Δ] Θ Ë^[1],13 [579] Ï lat co) have the clause. It could be argued that the shorter reading was an accidental omission, due to this clause and v. 8 both beginning with καί (kai, “and”). But if that were the case, one might expect to see corrections in א or B. This can be overstated, of course; both mss combine in their errors on several other occasions. However, the nature of the omission here (both its length and the fact that it is from the OT) argues that א and B reflect the original wording. Further, the form of the longer reading is identical with the LXX of Gen 2:24, but different from the quotation in Matt 19:5 (προσκολληθήσεται vs. κολληθήσεται [proskollhqhsetai vs. kollhqhsetai], πρὸς τὴν γυναῖκα vs. τῇ γυναικί [pro" thn gunaika vs. th gunaiki]). The significance of this is that Matthew’s quotations of the OT are often, if not usually, directly from the Hebrew – except when he is following Mark’s quotation of the OT. Matthew in fact only departs from Mark’s verbatim quotation of the LXX in 15:4 and 19:19, both texts quoting from Exod 20:12/Deut 5:6 (and in both places the only difference from Mark/LXX is the dropping of σου [sou, “your”]). This might suggest that the longer reading here was not part of what the first evangelist had in his copy of Mark. Further, the reading without this line is harder, for the wife is not explicitly mentioned in v. 7; the casual reader could read “the two” of v. 8 as referring to father and mother rather than husband and wife. (And Mark is known for having harder, shorter readings that scribes tried to soften by explanatory expansion: In this chapter alone, cf. the textual problems in v. 6 [the insertion of ὁ θεός]; in v. 13 [the replacement of αὐτοῖς with τοῖς προσφέρουσιν or τοῖς φέρουσιν]; in v. 24 [insertion of ἐστιν τοὺς πεποιθότας ἐπὶ χρήμασιν, πλούσιον, or τὰ χρήματα ἔχοντες; and perhaps in v. 2 [possible insertion of προσελθόντες Φαρισαῖοι or similar permutations].) Although a decision is difficult, the preferred reading lacks “and will be united with his wife.” NA²⁷ has the longer reading in brackets, indicating doubts as to its authenticity.

[10:8]  ¹⁴ sn A quotation from Gen 2:24. The “two” refers to husband and wife, not father and mother mentioned in the previous verse. See the tc note on “mother” in v. 7 for discussion.

[10:11]  ¹⁵ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “So” to indicate that Jesus’ statement is in response to the disciples’ question (v. 10).

[10:12]  ¹⁶ sn It was not uncommon in Jesus’ day for a Jewish man to divorce his wife, but it was extremely rare for a wife to initiate such an action against her husband, since among many things it would have probably left her destitute and without financial support. Mark’s inclusion of the statement And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery (v. 12) reflects more the problem of the predominantly Gentile church in Rome to which he was writing. As such it may be an interpretive and parenthetical comment by the author rather than part of the saying by Jesus, which would stop at the end of v. 11. As such it should then be placed in parentheses. Further NT passages that deal with the issue of divorce and remarriage are Matt 5:31-32; 19:1-12; Luke 16:18; 1 Cor 7.

[16:18]  ¹⁷ sn The examples of marriage and divorce show that the ethical standards of the new era are still faithful to promises made in the presence of God. To contribute to the breakup of a marriage, which involved a vow before God, is to commit adultery. This works whether one gets a divorce or marries a person who is divorced, thus finalizing the breakup of the marriage. Jesus’ point concerns the need for fidelity and ethical integrity in the new era.

[7:3]  ¹⁸ tn There is a double connective here that cannot be easily preserved in English: “consequently therefore,” emphasizing the conclusion of what he has been arguing.

[7:3]  ¹⁹ tn Grk “the,” with the article used as a possessive pronoun (ExSyn 215).

[7:1]  ²⁰ tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 1:13.

[7:1]  ²¹ sn Here person refers to a human being.

[1:4]  ²² tn The adverbial participle ἀκούσαντες (akousante") is understood to be temporal and translated with “since.” A causal idea may also be in the apostle’s mind, but the context emphasizes temporal ideas, e.g., “from the day” (v. 6).

[1:10]  ²³ tn The infinitive περιπατῆσαι (peripathsai, “to walk, to live, to live one’s life”) is best taken as an infinitive of purpose related to “praying” (προσευχόμενοι, proseucomenoi) and “asking” (αἰτούμενοι, aitoumenoi) in v. 9 and is thus translated as “that you may live.”

[1:10]  ²⁴ tn BDAG 129 s.v. ἀρεσκεία states that ἀρεσκείαν (areskeian) refers to a “desire to please εἰς πᾶσαν ἀ. to please (the Lord) in all respects Col 1:10.”

[1:11]  ²⁵ tn The expression “for the display of” is an attempt to convey in English the force of the Greek preposition εἰς (eis) in this context.