Category Archives: Divorce

January 31, 2023 · 3:50 pm

Covering the Altar with Tears

Malachi 2:13–14.
     13      And this is the second thing you do:
     You cover the altar of the LORD with tears,
     With weeping and crying;
     So He does not regard the offering anymore,
     Nor receive it with goodwill from your hands.
     14      Yet you say, “For what reason?”
     Because the LORD has been witness
     Between you and the wife of your youth,
     With whom you have dealt treacherously;
     Yet she is your companion
     And your wife by covenant.

The wives in Israel were so treacherously abused that they had no recourse but to cry before the Lord. THEY are the ones covering the altar with tears and bringing their cries to the Lord.

For this reason, God will not hear the prayers or accept the offerings of the husbands. You cannot treat your wife as a slave, a servant, or a beast, without bringing upon yourself the wrath of God.

In fact, Peter alludes to this passage in 1 Peter 3:7

1 Peter 3:7 (NKJV)
7Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.

If you treat your wife with anything less than the honor befitting a firstborn heir of eternal life in Christ, you are also dealing treacherously with her.

God hears the cries of the oppressed and he answers them.

Remember, dear ones, that Lazarus received evil things on this earth for a time, but when he died he was carried by the angels to the bosom of Abraham, and rests in the arms of Jesus for eternity.

The rich man, on the other hand, who was treacherous to Lazarus, was tormented day and night.

God knows how to deliver the godly and give them peace. The cries never go unheard.

She is a wife by covenant. This does not mean that you can treat her however you wish and she is not allowed to leave you. That is contrary to everything we know about covenants. I have written on that before. Malachi is using Old Testament language to say what Peter says in the New Testament. She is a co-heir of eternal life, a wife by the covenant you made with her, and that covenant can be broken.

Israel understood broken covenants. They had already been cast out of the land because they broke the covenant with their God. And now, as they are resettling the land, they are treating their wives, whom they made covenants with, the same way.

Which follows – they deserve to be cast out.

God is bearing witness of your treachery, and refuses to hear your prayers as long as your wife is covering the altar with tears.

Matthew 5:25–26 (NKJV)
25Agree with your adversary quickly, while you are on the way with him, lest your adversary deliver you to the judge, the judge hand you over to the officer, and you be thrown into prison.
26Assuredly, I say to you, you will by no means get out of there till you have paid the last penny.

In Malachi, the adversary is the oppressed wife, crying out to the judge. Make peace with her before Christ comes in judgment. Repent of your treachery, for there is a God in heaven coming to hand you over to judgment.

In fact, it would be better to give her a divorce and send her away (verse 16).

Therefore, the wise man will hear.

Take heed to your spirit, and do not deal treacherously. (Verse 16)

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April 11, 2022 · 9:14 am

“I hate divorce” follow up…

Sometimes I use this platform so I don’t have to keep typing the same thing over and over.

Several years ago, I posted about Malachi 2:16 “God hates divorce?”

And I followed it up here:

Every few years, someone brings up objections to my exegesis. If they are not reviling me (which is fairly common) I answer them. Generally like this:

Every translator translated it like I mentioned until the King James, and then they all followed suit. It became hallowed with use, but it, respectfully, is wrong.

The KJV also translated it assuming that the word “to send away” was an infinitive construct, as you do.

The problem is that the hebrew almost always uses the preposition “lamed” attached to the verb to indicate it as a helping verb. For an infinitive construct to stand alone without a preposition (as is the case here) it only admits of a very few uses, and a helping verb is not one of them. The infinitive construct without a verb is relatively rare in Hebrew.

So, when I translated this some years ago, I struggled with it. It was awkward, it wasn’t how Hebrew was normally used.

And then it occured to me – the 2s imperative has the exact same spelling and vowel points. Why do we assume it is an infinitive construct when the imperative is spelled exactly the same?

So I looked at the semantics that way

“Because” – or “that” (depends on context)

“He hates” – really can’t be translated honestly any other way – but I’ve read comments that say that it is a mistake, and the first person consonant dropped off by scribes centuries ago….)

Let go.

Run a quick search, with vowel points, on the word “send away” with the exact same spelling.

it comes up about 10 times, if I remember, and every time it means “set loose” send away, and almost always it was used by Moses while speaking to Pharaoh.

Thus sayeth the Lord “Let my people go”

Translated, let go, in this instance.

In Deuteromony 24 – the word to send away and the word “divorce” are contrasted to one another and not identical.

Quite frankly it just doesn’t mean what the KJV said it meant – other modern translations kept it the same because most evangelicals (those who buy bibles) don’t want to hear it. It is their favorite verse.

I know that I lost friends, lost church members, and was reviled publicly because of it. That is hard to go through.

But the Hebrew says what it says.

And thank you for the discussion. I have been reviled on it so many times, that an honest and intelligent discussion on it is a breath of fresh air.

Anyway, one other point – the “he”, which is the subject of “hates” can only refer to the treacherous man.

If it is referring to God, why does the Lord God refer to himself in the third person? Sometimes that is the case, but then it is clear that he is speaking of his triune persons. Here it is not at all that clear.

Also, if the first clause IS referring to God, “he hates”, then why does the second clause revert back to the treacherous man “For he covers violence with his garment…”

So the whole context – he is speaking in the third person of the treacherous man and then, all of the sudden, for three words, he is referring to the Lord God of Israel, and then back to the treacherous man.

It is just awkward.

This is why one grammar that I was checking on it posited that the “aleph” indicating first person must have dropped off in the copying process over the centuries and it REALLY says, “For I hate (to send away) – which, by the way, STILL doesn’t say, I hate divorce.

You would then have to change the infinitive construct to a participle to get it there and say, For I hate THE sending away – )

And that is closer, but still not there….so let’s make “send away” the same as “divorce”

For I hate divorce…”

And now you have something that isn’t there at all, but is repeated over and over and over again until it is believed to be biblical.

A couple of final points:

It matters. If you translate it correctly, you have not become a “liberal”, you have not become a white knight, and you are not, all of the sudden, against marriage and for easy divorce. Please try to separate what the scripture says from your modern social agenda.

What God hates is the treachery that leads up to divorce. What God hates is covenant breaking and hard hearts that sometimes makes divorce necessary.

What God hates is twisting his words to call the innocent guilty and the guilty innocent.

When you translate the verse correctly, you see God’s heart in this difficult passage. God hates treachery, violence, and hatred and he will come to judge the living and the dead. He is giving the opportunity for repentance, “Take heed to your spirit and do not act treacherously.”

To twist this around to “God hates divorce”, you turn it into a catch phrase to turn against the suffering and to send them back to their abuser.

“God hates divorce. So you have to suffer for his sake, just like Jesus did.”

Absolutely horrible and it really has to stop. WE’VE become the treacherous man that God is so strongly condemning.

Why do you think so many are willing to suffer so much reviling to get this passage right?

It matters.

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June 26, 2019 · 10:23 am

Divorce and Tempting God

Today I am preparing for a Bible Study on the sixth commandment. I am looking at our Heidelberg Catechism, question 105:

105. What does God require in the sixth commandment?

That I do not revile, hate, insult or kill my neighbor either in thought, word, or gesture, much less in deed, whether by myself or by another, but lay aside all desire of revenge; moreover, that I do not harm myself, nor willfully run into any danger. Wherefore also to restrain murder the magistrate is armed with the sword.

I am specifically thinking about that phrase, “nor willfully run into any danger.” The footnote refers us to Matthew 4:7. To understand my point here, I would like to look at the whole context, and then see what Jesus is teaching us.

5 Then the devil took Him up into the holy city, set Him on the pinnacle of the temple,
6 and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down. For it is written:`He shall give His angels charge over you,’ and,`In their hands they shall bear you up, Lest you dash your foot against a stone.'”
7 Jesus said to him, “It is written again,`You shall not tempt the LORD your God.‘”
(Matt. 4:5-7 NKJ – emphasis mine)

Jesus answers the devil’s temptation by referring to scripture. The devil sought to convince Jesus to throw himself down. “Doesn’t the bible say that God will give his angels charge over you? Doesn’t the bible say that God will not allow any harm to come to you? Prove it. Throw yourself down. Be reckless. Put God to the test.”

And Jesus answered “Thou shalt not put the Lord God to the test.” (This is what “tempt the Lord your God” means).

By willfully putting himself in danger, demanding that God protect him, Jesus would be acting sinfully, just like Israel did in the wilderness.

And yet, this is the counsel that thousands and thousands of pastors and counselors give to women and children living in dangerous conditions.

I heard again today of a woman who has lost her Christian friends and her Church because she fled her abusive husband and filed for divorce. He is in prison for his horrible sins towards her and her children. He threatened her. She believed him. She told her counselor. He told her to return to her husband, that it might be necessary to “suffer a season”. But by her “meek and quiet spirit” she will redeem her husband.

The violence is not under question. So many men are in prison for their violence towards their wives and children, but the wives end up driven from the church anyway. They were commanded to put God to the test and refused to do so, and were punished for it.

When you hear this counsel, have the courage to say what Jesus said, “It is written, you shall not tempt the Lord your God.”

Wisdom dictates that a fool returns to his folly as a dog to his vomit. A violent man remains violent. A promiscuous man remains promiscuous. A murderer remains a murderer.

Can God grant new birth and new life? Of course he can. But thou shalt not put him to the test. Can God use suffering for our good? Of course he can, but thou shalt not put him to the test. Can God protect us from evil men? Of course he can. But thou shalt not put him to the test.

Repentance and faith are free gifts given from God’s mercy alone. They don’t come on demand. You must not willfully put yourself into danger and put God to the test.

When you tell someone to put themselves into danger in order to uphold your idolatry of marriage, you are violating the 6th commandment.

God despises murder of every kind. Your life is valuable to him. He is not cruel and is not capricious. He will not have you killed to uphold another man’s desire to build a kingdom for himself.

If you are in danger, please seek help. If you are in a place where you are commanded to put God to the test, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Such counsel does not come from the Holy One.

Domestic violence hotline: 1-800-799-7233

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December 29, 2017 · 4:27 pm

On Unconditional Covenants

“Marriage is not a contract; it’s a covenant.”

Maybe you’ve heard that. It’s catchy. Someone says it at a big conference, everyone nods. They go back to their churches and repeat it. Everyone nods. And so it goes viral.

But does it actually mean anything? I’ve heard it explained that covenants are unconditional, but contracts can be broken. Hmmm.

This got me thinking about covenants and whether they are actually unconditional, and then I started thinking about falsification theory. I know. My mind flits.

Falsification theory was first mentioned by Karl Popper and popularized by Anthony Flew. Both, to my knowledge, were atheists. But they made interesting observations. The thinking is that for a statement to be meaningful at all, it must be falsifiable. I’ll try to explain. If I say that Felicity is a cat, what I mean is that there is a creature in my yard named Felicity and she belongs to a category of creature called a cat. It means something. If someone came to my back yard and proved to me that Felicity was indeed a raccoon, then my statement would be proven false. It is a falsifiable statement. If the statement was not falsifiable, then it is meaningless.

If, for example, I stated that Felicity is a cat, and what I meant by it was that Felicity is whatever you wish Felicity to be, and even her existence is up for debate, then I actually am not saying anything at all and should just keep quiet. In that case, when I say Felicity is a cat, and you say, “No, that is a raccoon” and I respond with, “mmm yes. That’s what I said. Cats and raccoons and fish are all one. It’s whatever you want it to be,” then you could justly accuse me of speaking nonsense. My statement is non-falsifiable. I should be pelted with rocks and garbage. Or perhaps a raccoon.

“This post is weird”

“I thought he was going to talk about marriage”

I’m getting there. When we say things like “covenants are unconditional”, it seems to me that we are making the same mistakes as those who speak non-falsifiable gibberish. If a covenant means anything, of course it can be broken. Otherwise it isn’t actually saying anything at all.

If, for example, I say to my wife “I promise to love you and honor you” and what I meant by it was “I plan to do whatever I want whenever I want to” then I actually haven’t vowed anything at all. I haven’t made a covenant or a commitment or anything of that nature. I was simply speaking gibberish, and again deserve to be pelted with rocks and garbage, because my wife was counting on my words meaning something.

It is commonly stated that the New Covenant is unconditional. But is this really true? Is it actually true that God will just zap us into heaven and we can do whatever we like to do whenever we want to do it?

The teaching of scripture is not that the New Covenant is unconditional, but that Christ has fulfilled the covenant in our place. He also creates in us clean hearts as was prophesied by the Prophets:

33 But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. (Jer 31:33)

We are justified, sanctified and glorified in Christ. Our salvation is assured in Christ. It can never be lost in Christ. But this is far different than saying that the covenant is unconditional.

Even the covenant with Abraham was conditional.

Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore, thou, and thy seed after thee in their generations. This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised…. And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant.
(Gen 17:9-10, 14)

We need to be more careful with our speech. How can an unconditional covenant be broken? Did God say to anyone, “Live exactly the way that you want to and do whatever you want when you want to do it. It’s all good.”

Never!

It is also true that we can never fulfill the conditions of the covenant. But this is different than saying that the covenant is unconditional. The gospel is that Christ has fulfilled the covenant in our place. He is the mediator of the New Covenant.

To say that a covenant is unconditional is to speak gibberish. How can I enter into covenant with you if the covenant doesn’t mean that I will do something and that you will respond in some way? Are we just speaking gibberish?

Classical Reformed Theology speaks about unconditional election, but this is a different thing. It was an answer to the claims of the Remonstrants that God’s election is dependent upon foreseen faith. The Council of Dort answered that God’s election flows from his good pleasure alone, and does not flow from a condition of any kind that he foresees as being fulfilled by the creature. Someone somewhere simplified the decrees of the council with the acronym TULIP, but to my mind, that is an over-simplification of the Canons of Dort. (For those new to TULIP, the “U” stands for “unconditional election.”)

But this doesn’t say anything about “unconditional covenants”. A covenant is an arrangement between two parties. In the case of God’s covenant with man, it is decreed by a sovereign and is therefore non-negotiable. God says, “I will be a God to you, and you will be my people”. He didn’t say, “I will be a God to you and you can dance around a calf or whatever if that makes you feel groovy.” When Israel whored after other gods, God called them “covenant breakers” and finally issued a bill of divorcement.

Because God never speaks gibberish, a covenant means something. It asserts a relationship based upon conditions and therefore can be broken. Just as a statement that is non-falsifiable is meaningless, so a covenant that cannot be broken is gibberish.

If by “unconditional covenant” you mean that Christ fulfills all of the conditions of the covenant and I stand before him perfect and whole as if I had never committed nor had any sin, then I’m with you. I wish that you would use different language, but you have no argument. If, however, you mean that God is stuck with taking us to heaven no matter what we do in this life as long as we accepted Jesus into our hearts at church camp when we were teenagers because we wanted to get it on with Betsy – then I am going to have to part ways.

The Jews thought like this. John said to them, “Don’t say that you are children of Abraham. God is able of these stones to raise up children of Abraham.” God is never “stuck” with a scoundrel because of some nonsense about an “unconditional covenant”. Repent, and be converted.

Back to our original statement. “Marriage is not a contract; it’s a covenant”. I still think this is meaningless. But I fear that it is used to teach this strange and unbiblical idea that covenants are unbreakable, even though scripture is full of those termed “covenant breakers”.

To apply it to marriage, a man takes a vow. He says, “I promise and covenant before God and these witnesses to love, honor, and cherish you, to keep myself only for you, as long as we both shall live.”

These are solemn vows. If they are unbreakable vows, then they mean nothing. They are like a cat who is also a raccoon. But God would not have us speaking gibberish. If a man fails to love, fails to honor, fails to cherish, and is unfaithful, he has BROKEN THE COVENANT!

If that is not the case, let’s change our wedding ceremonies to whatever we want, marry our livestock, dance naked in jello, and do as we please. Words apparently mean nothing.

Call it a contract or a covenant, we take solemn vows when we marry. Our spouse takes solemn vows. The solemn vows are dependent upon one another. A woman won’t vow those vows to a man who has no intention of vowing those vows. Lives are at stake, which is why we take solemn vows. If one of the parties taking those vows has no intention of keeping those vows, then the covenant is broken.

Let’s look at it from a business standpoint. I sign a contract promising that I will haul a cord of wood to your barn in exchange for 200 dollars. Since words mean things, this is an enforceable vow (or contract, or covenant – whatever you want to call it.) If I fail to haul the wood to your barn, then the covenant is broken, and you are not obligated to pay me 200 dollars.

Covenants can and are broken, because of the hardness of men’s hearts. This is what Jesus meant when he said concerning the decree of divorce, “Because of the hardness of your hearts, Moses wrote that.”

Men and women are covenant breakers. For the sake of order, it is sometimes necessary for the law to recognize that the covenant is broken. God would not have his children in bondage to the gibberish of the devil. Shine some light on it. Speak words that mean what they say. Keep your vows.

This is what a Christian does.

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March 13, 2017 · 2:10 pm

Christ, the Church, and Marriage

I have a beautiful muscat grape vine. Last week I pruned it. Then I felt bad, since Jesus is the vine and we are the branches. Maybe in my pruning the vine I misrepresented the permanence of the Covenant of grace. Jesus will never cut us off, will he?

Last night, before I went to bed, I locked my front door. That made me feel bad, since Jesus is the door, that maybe I misrepresented the kingdom of heaven, by locking people out of my house.

I guess that when I turned off my lights at night, I could possibly be communicating that I walk in darkness and not in the light. I should probably keep them on.

And I could go on, except now it is getting silly.

In case you wondered, these ridiculous examples show how important it is to interpret pictures and parables correctly.

Take, for example, our mystic union with Christ. It is so intense, so diverse and so deep that scripture uses picture after picture after picture to describe it.

He is the vine; we are the branches. He is the Good Shepherd, we are the sheep. He is the head; we are the body.

And this one: He is the husband; we are the bride.

And that brings me to my point. Ephesians 5 is about the union of one flesh that takes place in a marriage. The husband and the wife, through mutual love and submission, are to become more and more as one flesh – like Christ and the church.

And we have to be very careful about imagery. Don’t take it further than is intended. The common interpretation of Ephesians 5:22ff is this: Marriage is a picture of Christ and the church. Since Christ will never abandon his church, divorce is forbidden under all circumstances.

Hogwash. This is the same as saying that since Christ will never abandon his church, we also must never prune our vines. It’s silly on the face of it.

I have also heard that since Paul says that the husband is like Christ, he is to sanctify the wife with the word, and act as her prophet priest and king.

Piffle. It doesn’t say that at all.

The Husband isn’t Christ; Ephesians 5:22ff teaches only this: the husband is to love sacrificially like Christ did. This doesn’t say that the wife is not to be like Christ, nor does it say that the husband is a king, or a prophet or a priest in the home – like Christ. It merely says that the husband is to love sacrificially, like Christ loved the church.

The wife is to submit, which I preached on here. It doesn’t say she is made in the image of man, or that she is eternally subordinate, or that the husband is her savior, umbrella of protection, or any other nonsense. It simply says submit, like the church submits to Christ. She also is a Christian, and a partaker of Jesus’ anointing. She is also a human being, made in God’s image. She is a covenant creature, responsible to God alone. She also is given the Holy Spirit. But when she marries, she is to strive to be one flesh with her husband, like Christ and the church. That’s all that Ephesians 5 is teaching.

When you say that, it is best to then stop with the analogies, lest you make the husband a god and the wife an idolater.

This passage says nothing about whether divorce is permitted, whether marriage is to be a “living picture of the gospel” or anything else of that sort. It is simply an analogy that Paul uses pastorally to teach, first of all, about mystic union with Christ, and second, about husbands and wives.

God created a world so that he could reveal himself to men. He created lambs and fire and gold and bulls and trees so that when he spoke to us, we would know something about what he is talking about. So also with marriage. He gave us marriage so that when he speaks to us of love, tenderness, intimacy and union, we would know something of what he is talking about.

But we also must understand that we cannot ever know God exhaustively. Ultimately, his name is “wonderful”, that is, to be wondered at, not exhausted. He is “I Am that I Am”, self-referential. To bring more into the nature of God than scripture gives us warrant is to ultimately become an idolater.

So let’s be careful with our marriage counsel.  A husband and wife are not a living picture of the gospel any more than any Christian, whether married or single. Ephesians 5 says nothing about divorce or eternal covenants. It implies a LOT about abuse. If the husband abuses his wife, then he blasphemes the name of Christ, but that’s another blog for another time.

Let’s be Christians in all of our actions. This means that all of us- married, single, men, women, children- should strive to become more and more like Jesus. And at the same time, let’s cast aside all the nonsense in the marriage books that go so far beyond what the scripture actually says that they are beginning to sound like caricatures of themselves.

There’s a lot more in the book of Ephesians than Ephesians 5:22. I would recommend that you read the whole book in one sitting, and then read it again. Look at the whole message and see who Jesus is. That’s the point of it.

Of course, to be blatantly self-marketing, one could also simply listen to my series of sermons on Ephesians.

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April 26, 2016 · 7:57 am

Things that God Hates

Here’s an incomplete list of things that God hates:

Reviling.

Drunkenness

Taking his name in vain.

Idolatry

Brawling

Oppression

Hatred

Oppression

Abuse.

Being delivered from that? God loves that. In fact, he sent his Son to die that we might be delivered from the kingdom of the devil, both the bondage in our own hearts as well as the bondage inflicted upon us from others.

Again, “God hates divorce” is nowhere in the Bible.

Another thought on that:

Capital punishment and other criminal penalties are also not part of God’s perfect plan of creation. But to say then that they are forbidden by God and hated by God is a stretch of rather sketchy exegesis. They are necessary because we live in a world of treachery and oppression.

So also divorce. Sure, God didn’t create the world with divorce as a part of his perfect plan of creation. But that isn’t the world we live in now.

“Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses wrote that.”

As long as men’s hearts are still full of evil – reviling, drunkenness, brawling, idolatry – divorce is still necessary, just like capital punishment will still be necessary as long as there are murderers.

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April 6, 2016 · 9:36 am

The Secret Things of God

The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law. (Deu 29:29 KJV)

Making decisions is a daunting process. There is much that goes into a decision, especially one that will change a life.

Take, for example, a decision to separate or divorce a spouse. This decision is terrifying enough, but it is often muddled by poor counsel. As Christian counselors and pastors, we must ensure that our counsel is based firmly upon scripture, and not the opinions or biases of men.

Whole books have been written on appropriate grounds for divorce, but the purpose of this post is to address just one area where we often go wrong.

We must remember that we cannot make decisions based upon what we hope God will do in the future. This belongs to the secret things of God. God has revealed to us what he wants us to know so that we can make right decisions that are honoring to him, but he has reserved the future for his hand alone.

To put this practically, suppose a wife reports – again –  to the elders that her husband refuses to keep his marriage vows. Perhaps he is violent, abusive or engaged in fornication. Perhaps he is a drunkard or a reviler. Let’s assume that these facts are not in dispute. Everyone knows that this is what the wife has been enduring  for years.

When she reports that she is filing for divorce, the answer of her elders is often something like this: “God can change hearts. Stay in the marriage. What will you do if he repents? What if he changes?”

It seems to me that this puts an unendurable burden on the heart of the wife (or husband, as the case may be). The church is asking her to make a life-altering decision based upon what God may or may not do in the future. But how can we ask our sheep to sin in this regard?

The devil took Jesus to the temple and told him to throw himself down, for God promised that he would not allow his foot to be moved. In other words, the devil told Jesus to make a decision based upon requiring God to act in a certain way. But Jesus called this testing God, which is forbidden in the law.

Let’s apply this to our example. The way that things stand now, she has grounds for divorce. Assume, again, that this is not disputed. But she is still counseled to remain in the marriage “in case he repents”. But repentence is a gift of God. Only God can change a heart. So now we are asking this woman to make a life-altering decision, or even put her life in danger, based upon what we hope God will do in the future.

But our text in Deuteronomy forbids doing just that. We cannot make our decision based upon the “secret things of God”. We are required only to make wise decisions based upon what we know today.

As of right now, is your husband a reviler, drunkard, abuser, fornicator? As of right now, is the marriage broken? As of right now, has he pulled asunder what God has joined together?

We can only make these decisions based upon what is revealed to us. To pry into the future is forbidden by God and is only a short step away from soothsaying and fortune-telling.

It is cruel and ungodly to force a spouse to stay in perpetual limbo because God may or may not act in the future, especially when Jesus himself said that God gave us divorce because of the hardness of men’s hearts. Because men’s hearts are still hard, divorce is still sometimes an option.

To ask what the offended spouse would do if there was repentance is neither helpful nor biblical. I could ask what I would do if I won the lottery or became rich and famous, but to base your life and obedience upon a fantasy is not honoring to God. Let’s not fall into the heresy of Creflo Dollar’s prosperity gospel in our counsel to hurting men and women.

CAN God bring repentance? Of course he can. That isn’t the question. Can God fill your bank account with gold? Of course he can.

Why is one fantasy wrong while the another is right? Would it be foolish to buy a new car or a new house based upon hoping that God can fill our bank account with gold? Of course it is. Then why would we counsel a spouse to stay in a broken marriage based upon hoping that God will grant repentance?  All we can do is make the best decisions that we can based upon what we know NOW. Is the man a fool addicted to his folly? Of COURSE God can change his heart, but that isn’t the point.

Wisdom would dictate that throwing yourself off of the temple would be suicide. It would have been a denial of God. Wisdom also dictates that fools return to their folly. This is the norm, just as falling from the temple results in death.

As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly. (Pro 26:11 KJV)

This is what fools do and will continue to do apart from God’s free and unmerited grace. God can, of course, intervene. He often does, or we would all be lost. We call upon men and women to repent and believe and pray for God’s intervention in their headlong rush to hell. We urge, we exhort, we confront. But when it comes to decisions – whether we are judges deciding on a sentence, church courts deciding on discipline, or spouses deciding on divorce –  we must act in wisdom, not in fantasy.

Only God can soften a heart, and we pray that he will. But we have to make our decisions based upon what God has revealed to us, not through crystal-ball gazing or empty hopes.

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April 16, 2015 · 12:28 pm

God Hates Divorce, part 2

In my previous post, I showed how the Hebrew of Malachi 2:16 has only one possible translation that takes into account the grammar and pronunciation of the Hebrew words:

“Because he hates, send away,” says the Lord, the God of Israel, “and violence covers his garment.”

The question now is how that translation fits with the immediate context of Malachi.  The pericope is 2:10-16:

 10 Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us? why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers?

 11 Judah hath dealt treacherously, and an abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem; for Judah hath profaned the holiness of the LORD which he loved, and hath married the daughter of a strange god.

 12 The LORD will cut off the man that doeth this, the master and the scholar, out of the tabernacles of Jacob, and him that offereth an offering unto the LORD of hosts.

 13 And this have ye done again, covering the altar of the LORD with tears, with weeping, and with crying out, insomuch that he regardeth not the offering any more, or receiveth it with good will at your hand.

 14 Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because the LORD hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously: yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant.

 15 And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth.

 16 For the LORD, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away: for one covereth violence with his garment, saith the LORD of hosts: therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherously.

 (Mal 2:10-16 KJV)

The theme that Malachi is expounding is found in verse 10, “Why do we deal treacherously?”  The word “treacherously” is found 5 times in these verses. It means to deal faithlessly, with deceit.

We were created to relate to God and to one another. There are rules for living together in a society. The Bible calls these relationships “covenants”. Some are simple and not spelled out explicitly. I have an expectation to not be insulted and abused by strangers. I expect to be treated fairly.  Other expectations are spelled out explicitly. The marriage relationship is marked by solemn vows before God. We join churches, take oaths in courts, and sign contracts. All of these are covenants.

To deal treacherously is to break these covenant relationships. The word is bagad. This word is the theme of our text. Judah was dealing treacherously. They were abusing their relationships. The first example that Malachi gives is the example of Judah dealing treacherously with God by marrying the “daughter of a foreign god.” A man who marries outside of the covenant with God is either saying that his covenant with God is irrelevant, or that his covenant with his wife is irrelevant. How can one be “one flesh” with a wife who is not in fellowship with the one true God? The only way that a man can marry an unbeliever is by reducing marriage to simply a sexual relationship, OR by reducing his covenant with God to a matter of tradition and convenience. Either way, the man is guilty of bagad – treachery.

But that isn’t all. The next accusation, for the rest of the sons of Judah, is this one: The altar of God was covered with tears.

When one is weeping on the altar, one has no other remedy, no help and no strength. She has no where else to turn except to pour out her complaint to God. And why was she pouring out her grief on the altar? Because her husband was dealing treacherously with her. She entered into a marriage covenant – which meant he promised to love and honor and cherish her. He promised to cling to her and forsake all others.

His WIFE! She was the wife of his youth, his “companion”. The word “companion” is a word that is only used once in this form in the whole Old Testament. The only other time that a form of it appears is in describing the curtains of the tabernacle and how they were “tied” together in knots. A companion is one who is tied to you with knots. She’s your knot. God joined you to her. She’s the wife of your covenant. There is no closer relationship.

THIS woman, whom you vowed to love and cherish – you’ve dealt treacherously with her. You have treated her so badly that she is covering the altar of the Lord with tears so that God doesn’t accept your offerings anymore. God has heard your vows. And God has watched how you have treated your wife when you think no one else is watching. He is a witness.

Verse 15 is difficult to translate, but the meaning seems clear. God made Adam and Eve to be fruitful and to fill the earth and have dominion over the earth. They were created in God’s image and were called to spread this kingdom of God – the dominion of God’s image-bearers – throughout all of creation, just like it was in Eden. For this to happen, God didn’t create another species and bring that species to Adam. Rather, he took Eve from Adam’s rib. One flesh, one blood – the man and woman, husband and perfect suitable helper – and made them one flesh. He sought the “seed of God”.

But instead of that, sin entered the world and men became treacherous, violating that harmony, hating their wives and oppressing them, rather than loving them. This should not be, especially among God’s people.

And now we get to verse 16 and see that it makes perfect sense. If you hate her that much, set her free! Be open with it. You put on one front but behind closed doors you are something else entirely. Clothe yourself with the violence that defines your life and set your wife free!

So is God condoning divorce? No. That isn’t really the point of the passage. The point is the last part of the verse:  “therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherously.”

The point is that there are things in this world that God hates far, far more than divorce. He hates treachery. He hates bagad. It is a violation of his nature, of his faithfulness, of our calling as creatures in his image. He hates all forms of it. He hates oppression. He hates persecution. He hates lying and deceit. He hates the proud, treacherous heart. He hates the entitlement mentality that says “I am; and there is none like me!” God hates the hatred that a man has for his wife, causing him to rail at her, to oppress her, to take a mistress or another wife. He hates the disharmony that wicked men cause in their home.

If you insist on treating your wife like this, set her free. It will be the only decent thing you’ve ever done.

What would be far better, though, is if you took heed to your spirit and quit treating her this way. If you refuse to do that, don’t think that God doesn’t hear the voice of your wife pouring out her tears on the altar. God hears that, and will not allow those tears to go unanswered.

Why isn’t God hearing your prayers? Why doesn’t he accept your sacrifices? Because of how you treat your wife.

If you hate her that much, set her free.

But then, you say, how will we keep our wives from leaving us? First, I have to say to you that if force and intimidation are the only tools in your arsenal to keep your marriage, then you need to reevaluate your existence as a human being.

Instead of asking that question, ask instead, “How can I make my wife WANT to stay married to me?”

Paul answers this in Ephesians 5. Love your wives, as Christ loved the church.

Or, as Malachi puts it – take heed to your spirit. Remember the wife of your youth. Build relationship with her. Quit the angry bitter thoughts. Think of her as the wife of your youth – the first blooming of love in the heart of the passionate teenager. Those blossoms can only grow when tended, each year more and more beautiful, until when you are 100 and she is 90, and she is calling you lord in her heart, as Sarah did to Abraham.

You may snort and say, “Well, she’s no Sarah.”

And you’re no Abraham. Tend your garden. Love your wives. don’t you dare deal treacherously with the one that God tied to your soul – your wife by covenant.

 

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April 16, 2015 · 11:09 am

God hates divorce?

Does Malachi 2:16 teach that God hates divorce?

The King James: For the LORD, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away: for one covereth violence with his garment, saith the LORD of hosts: therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherously.

The New King James: “For the LORD God of Israel says That He hates divorce, For it covers one’s garment with violence,” Says the LORD of hosts. “Therefore take heed to your spirit, That you do not deal treacherously.”

The New American Standard: “For I hate divorce,” says the LORD, the God of Israel, “and him who covers his garment with wrong,” says the LORD of hosts. “So take heed to your spirit, that you do not deal treacherously.”

The English Standard: Malachi 2:16 “For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the LORD, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the LORD of hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless.”

The New International Version: “The man who hates and divorces his wife,” says the LORD, the God of Israel, “does violence to the one he should protect,” says the LORD Almighty. So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful.

One can certainly tell that there is no unanimity in the translation of this rather difficult text.

The current interpretation of the text by conservative Christians is close to the New American Standard translation. “I hate divorce”, says the Lord, the God of Israel…”

I have an incessantly curious nature when it comes to God’s word. Why are there so many different translations? Why are there so many interpretations? Why, if God hates divorce, does God divorce his people Israel? Why does God permit divorce in Deuteronomy 24:1-4? God never permits that which he hates. What does it mean?

Another problem that arises is that anyone who strays from the “God hates divorce” camp is immediately accused of being tainted by the world. “50% divorce rate because of liberal thinking like this. God hates divorce!” You will be called worldly, or worse, a feminist!

But I am a Christian who believes in the infallible and inerrant word of God as our only guide to eternal life. Our faith and our practice is driven ONLY by the inspired word.

So with that understanding, I delved into Malachi 2:16. I could not simply allow the “professionals” to translate it and pick which version I liked best. I am accountable to God to use whatever gifts He has given me to discern what the text actually says.

In the end, it doesn’t matter what the world says. It doesn’t matter what accusations are thrown around. It doesn’t matter the opinion of the latest celebrity preacher. All that matter is what God says.

This article is a little more technical than I usually write. There is a reason for it. I am fully aware that the views expressed here will leave me open to accusations of being “soft on divorce”. I assure you that is not the case. My only concern is to rightly discern God’s word and go where it leads. This article is for the purpose of making it clear what my view is; how I arrived at it; and perhaps open up some very closed minds to the truth of God’s word.

If we believe that the Bible is the word of God; if we believe that it is sufficient, necessary, clear and authoritative; then we must go to the text itself and let it speak for itself.

There are certain principles of interpretation that every student of the Bible, especially those of the Reformed and Presbyterian persuasion, should recognize.

First, the primary author of Scripture is God Himself. There is only one author, and He is perfectly wise and His lips speak knowledge and understanding. For this reason, there are no contradictions in Scripture. God doesn’t change His mind. God doesn’t grow in His knowledge and understanding. Jesus doesn’t contradict Moses and Malachi doesn’t contradict Hosea. To apply this simply, those texts that are clear must interpret those texts that are rather difficult. If an interpretation on a text flat-out contradicts a clear text elsewhere in scripture, great care must be taken. God is not foolish. He is not “yes” and “no”.

Second, God used human language and human authors. This means that ordinary rules of grammar were used to communicate eternal truths about God. These human authors lived in cultures and eras of history and their language was the language of the time. Of course, this can be and has been greatly abused – mostly by those who do not keep the unchanging Divine Author clear in their thoughts. But the truth of the matter is that the words that were used were intended to be read and understood by a contemporary audience. There was no “secret” language with secret numbers and hidden codes. Just ordinary words used in an ordinary way following the ordinary rules of communication.

Third, the Hebrew language contains some challenges all its own, especially for English speakers. The Hebrew text is a consonantal text. This means that in the original there were only consonants. Vowels were passed down from generation to generation through oral tradition. In the early Middle Ages after Christ, (around 800AD or so) a group of Hebrew scholars known as the Masoretes invented a system of dots and lines to indicate the vowels and the proper pronunciation. After several centuries, this system was modified, edited and corrected until it was received by all, and by the 10th century, there was a received text of the Hebrew Bible with the vowel points added.

The vowel points are crucial to the interpretation of the words. If the pronunciation of a word changed, the meaning and the grammar of that word would change. If the vowel points are not reliable, then the text is not reliable.

I hold to the general inerrancy of the Hebrew vowel points. I believe that God has providentially preserved even the pronunciation of the Hebrew Bible. I am aware that this means that at times there will be difficulties, but I am far more comfortable saying that I don’t understand something than I am saying that the text is somehow corrupted .

This is important. Current scholarship generally denies the inerrancy of the points. Whenever a passage is difficult to interpret, they tend to try to make sense of the words by attempting different vowels here and there until they think that they have a solution. I believe that this is bad exegesis. It tends to lend itself to endless variation of translation based upon the presuppositions of the translator.

This also explains why there are so many different translations of Malachi 2:16, especially as the “fluidity” of the vowel points became more and more an acceptable interpretation technique. Change a vowel here and there, and “he hates” becomes “I hate”; and the verb “to send away” becomes the noun “divorce”.

For example, one analysis reads:

“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).”

Do you see what great lengths this commentator has gone to twist the words to say what he wants them to say? Amend the words, assume an entire pronoun has dropped out, and that the Masoretic scribes got the pronunciation wrong, even though there is absolutely no reason to believe so. The manuscript itself has never been in dispute.

So to summarize: God’s word does not contradict itself; God used ordinary language and grammar to communicate His word; The Hebrew text has been passed down to us accurately – let’s begin to look at the words themselves.

With that in mind, lets look at Malachi 2:16

As it happens, the entire difficulty in this passage is in the interpretation of the first three words of the text:  כִּי־שָׂנֵא שַׁלַּח ki-sane shallach

        The first word is ki. It is a common Hebrew conjunction that can be translated many different ways depending on the context. It can mean “because” or “for” or “that”, or it can be used similar to our quotation marks to mark off a direct quotation. Other possibilities are “When, if, although,” and so on.

        The second word, sane,  is “he hates”. The third word, shallach is “send away, set free, let go.”

        After these three words, the text says, “Says the LORD, the God of Israel”.

        So what does it mean? We will take the conjunction last, since its interpretation depends upon the other two words. Here are the possibilities from the English translations:

First, “For the LORD, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away” (King James Version). In this version, the conjunction is tied to the second phrase, not the first one. The assumption is that the subject of the verb “to hate” is God and that the object of God’s hatred is “the sending away”. This scheme is generally followed by the NKJ and the NAS. But there are some problems:

First, the third phrase, completing the quote is this: “and violence covers his garments”. If “he” in the first phrase refers to God (as the one hating) then why would the antecedent suddenly change in the rest of the quote? Is it God’s garments that are covered with violence? If “he” is God in the first, it must be God also in the rest of the quote. Then we would have “God hates divorce and violence covers his garments.”

You could make some sense of it in English, but not without mangling the Hebrew.

If you took the stance of the New American Standard, and changed the subject of “hates” to the first person singular pronoun, (I hate), then the rest of the phrase could justify a change in the pronoun (as the NAS does) but the problem is that the vowel points do not fit. In fact, there is only one translation that matches the pointing of the text: “He hates”. That’s the only thing that it can mean without twisting the pronunciation. So who is the subject of the sentence? It can’t be God, because that doesn’t fit the rules of grammar. Since the subject is not given expressly, I would take the subject as a hypothetical man, an indeterminate “he”.

The next word shallach (to send away) is a little more difficult.  The first problem is the assumption that “to send away” is the exact equivalent of “to divorce”. It is not. The primary meaning is to send. The form that it is in (the vowel points and double consonant “L”) is what is called the piel form, which slightly changes the meaning. The most common translations are “set free”, “let go”, “dismiss”, “send away”. Divorce, as it is understood today, and as practiced in ancient Israel (give her a bill of divorcement), is the legal procedure of acknowledging the broken marriage covenant. One can certainly “send away” a wife without divorcing her. Furthermore, Deuteronomy 24:1 uses both the legal term “divorce” and the word “shallach”, meaning to send (her) away. These are not identical terms.

If the meaning of this text is as it is commonly presented, “God hates divorce”, then even the translation of the word itself is problematic. Usually those who hold this view say that if a woman is in an abusive relationship, she can separate, but not divorce. However, the word shallach means to send away, not to obtain a bill of divorcement. If divorce is forbidden here, then certainly separation is.

Instead of ascribing a rather obscure and perhaps unknown meaning to the word shallach, let’s take it in its most common and highly attested use, “send away”, and see where that leads us.

The next issue are the vowel points. As they stand, there are only two forms of the Hebrew verb that use these vowel points. One is called the infinitive construct, the other is a masculine singular imperative (or, command).  The infinitive construct is similar to an English infinitive. If it was an infinitive construct, the two words together would be translated, “He hates to send away;” Since this doesn’t make a lot of sense, it is generally understood as a participle: “He hates the sending away”, or “he hates divorce”.  But there are a lot of assumptions that need to happen for this to be valid. First, one would have to assume that an infinitive construct is the equivalent of a participle, which it is not. The second assumption is that “he” refers to God, and then switches to the treacherous man in the second half of the quote. That is a big leap, and contrary to the ordinary rules of grammar. Quite simple, we must rule out the infinitive construct, for it would be complete nonsense grammatically. To view an infinitive construct as the direct object of the verb “to hate” is to do violence to rules of grammar. It is nowhere attested as a valid interpretation.

But there is a far easier way that fits the grammar, the historical context, and the analogy of Scripture perfectly. The word shallach is actually a command. It is an imperative, 2nd person, masculine singular. That is the only form it CAN be without twisting the natural use of language. The use of shallach, the exact spelling – points and all – is found fifteen times in the Old Testament. Three times it is used as an infinitive construct (Genesis 8:10; Exodus 8:29 and Jeremiah 40:1). In the Genesis passage, the infinitive construct acts as a helping verb to complete another verb, which is the most common form of an infinitive construct standing without a preposition. But in the Exodus and the Jeremiah passage, both the infinitives have a preposition. (that’s a whole other story. I just added that for the Hebrew purists). Every other time it is a command, translated “Let go, drive away, release” depending on the context.

Nine of those times, it is the command of the Lord to Pharaoh. Thus saith the Lord, let my people go.

In not one of these places does shallach mean “divorce”. That would be nonsense. Did Noah divorce the dove, or send her away? Did Pharoah divorce Israel, or send them away?

The problem with the translation given by the ESV (“For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her”) is that the word “divorce” is translated as if it is a simple action verb. But the vowel pointing does not allow that. In order for this to mean “he divorces her”, the verb would have to be spelled differently.  The points don’t fit. The only form where the points and the grammar fit is an imperative, (command). Not only does shallach NOT mean divorce, but it isn’t an simple action verb, nor is there a connecting conjunction (and). Taking these liberties with the text is contrary to the history of the church in translating this phrase, but it also changes the meaning and misses the point.

Taking the whole phrase in its most natural sense, without any assumptions and without changing any of the pronunciation, we have this:

“Because he hates, let (her) go,” says the LORD, the God of Israel…

This translation not only is the only one that does full justice to the inspired text, including the vowel points and the simple, ordinary use of language, but it is also well attested in the history of the church. It is the translation of the Vulgate, the Geneva Bible of 1599, and Calvin. In fact, Calvin wrote,

“This then is the reason why the Prophet now says, If thou hatest, dismiss; not that he grants indulgence to divorce, as we have said, but that he might by this circumstance enhance the crime; and hence he adds, For he covers by a cloak his violence.”

This may seem a bit strange to those who have been steeped in the teaching of the church for the past 30 years. Does the Bible really say that if a man hates his wife, he should set her free? This can’t be so! Does that fit the context of Malachi?

That will be the subject of my next article.

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