Matthew 19:1-3

Questions About Divorce

19:1 Now when ¹  Jesus finished these sayings, he left Galilee and went to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan River. ²  19:2 Large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.

19:3 Then some Pharisees ³  came to him in order to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful ⁴  to divorce a wife for any cause?” ⁵ 

¹ tn Grk “it happened when.” The introductory phrase ἐγένετο (egeneto, “it happened that”) is redundant in contemporary English and has not been translated.

² tn “River” is not in the Greek text but is supplied for clarity. The region referred to here is sometimes known as Transjordan (i.e., “across the Jordan”).

³ tn Grk “And Pharisees.”

⁴ tc ‡ Most mss have either ἀνθρώπῳ (anqrwpw, “for a man” [so א² C D W Θ 087 Ë^1,13 33 Ï latt]) or ἀνδρί (andri, “for a husband” [1424^c pc]) before the infinitive ἀπολῦσαι (apolusai, “to divorce”). The latter reading is an assimilation to the parallel in Mark; the former reading may have been motivated by the clarification needed (especially to give the following αὐτοῦ [autou, “his”] an antecedent). But a few significant mss (א* B L Γ 579 [700] 1424* pc) have neither noun. As the harder reading, it seems to best explain the rise of the others. NA²⁷, however, reads ἀνθρώπῳ here.

⁵ sn The question of the Pharisees was anything but sincere; they were asking it to test him. Jesus was now in the jurisdiction of Herod Antipas (i.e., Judea and beyond the Jordan) and it is likely that the Pharisees were hoping he might answer the question of divorce in a way similar to John the Baptist and so suffer the same fate as John, i.e., death at the hands of Herod (cf. 14:1-12). Jesus answered the question not on the basis of rabbinic custom and the debate over Deut 24:1, but rather from the account of creation and God’s original design.