CHAPTER XLVI. THE LAST STAY IN PEREA. "At evening time it shall be light."-ZECH, xiv. 7. WHEREVER the ministry of Jesus was in the slightest degree public, there we invariably find the Pharisees watching, lying in wait for Him, tempting Him, trying to entrap Him into some mistaken judgment or ruinous decision. But perhaps even their malignity never framed a question to which the answer was so beset with difficulties as when they came to "tempt' Him with the problem, "Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause ?"1 The question was beset with difficulties on every side, and for many reasons. In the first place, the institution of Moses on the subject was ambiguously expressed. Then this had given rise to a decided opposition of opinion between the two most important and flourishing of the rabbinic schools. The difference of the schools had resulted in a difference in the customs of the nation. Lastly the theological, scholastic, ethical,, and national difficulties were further complicated by political ones, for the prince in whose domain the ques 1 Matt. xix. 3-12; Mark x. 2-12. LAW OF DIVORCE. 151 tion was asked was deeply interested in the answer, and had already put to death the greatest of the prophets for his bold expression of the view which was most hostile to his own practice. Whatever the truckling Rabbis of Galilee might do, St. John the Baptist, at least, had left no shadow of a doubt as to what was his interpretation of the Law of Moses, and he had paid the penalty of his frankness with his life. Moses had laid down the rule that when a man had married a wife, and "she find no favour in his eyes because he hath found some uncleanness (marg., 'matter of nakedness,' Heb., ervath dabhar) in her, then let him write a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man's wife." Now in the interpretation of this rule, everything depended on the meaning of the expression ervath dabhar, or rather on the meaning of the single word ervath. It meant, generally, a stain or desecration, and Hillel, with his school, explained the passage in the sense that a man might "divorce his wife for any disgust which he felt towards her;"2 even the celebrated R. Akiba ventured to say-if he saw any other woman who pleased him more; whereas the as. 1 Deut. xxiv. 1, 2. Literally, ervath dabhar is "nakedness of a matter" (blösse im irgend etwas). (Ewald, Hebr. Gram., § 286, f.) * The kaтà mâσav airíav of Matt. xix. 3 is a translation of the 77 (al cól dabhar), which was Hillel's exposition of the disputed passage. (See Buxtorf, De Syn. Jud. 29.) Almost the identical phrase is found in Jos. Antt. iv. 8, § 23, kal' äs dŋtoтoûv airías. Cf. Ecclus. xxv. 26, "If she go not as thou wouldest have her, cut her off from thy flesh." 3 The comments of the Rabbis were even more shameful: e.g., "If she spin in public, go with her head uncovered," &c.; "Even if she have oversalted his soup" (Gittin, 90) (Selden, De Ux. Heb. iii. 17). This, however is explained away by modern commentators (Jost, Gesch. Jud. 264). Yet it is not surprising that it led to detestable consequences. Thus we are school of Shammai interpreted it to mean that divorce could only take place in cases of scandalous unchastity. Hence the Jews had the proverb that in this matter, as in so many others, "Hillel loosed what Shammai bound." Shammai was morally right and exegetically wrong; Hillel exegetically right and morally wrong. Shammai was only right in so far as he saw that the spirit of the Mosaic legislation made no divorce justifiable in foro conscientiae, except for the most flagrant immorality; Hillel only right in so far as he saw that Moses had left an opening for divorce in foro civili in slighter cases than these. But under such circumstances, to decide in favour of either school would not only be to give mortal offence to the other, but also either to exasperate the lax many, or to disgust the high-minded few. For in those corrupt days the vast majority acted at any rate on the principle laid down by Hillel, as the Jews in the East continue to do to this day. Such, in fact, was the universal tendency of the times. In the heathen, and especially in the Roman world, the strictness of the marriage bond had been so shamefully relaxed, that, whereas, in the Republic, centuries had passed before there had been one single instance of a frivolous divorce, under the Empire, on the contrary, divorce was the rule, and faithfulness the exception. The days of the Virginias, and Lucretias, and Cornelias had passed; this was the age of the Julias, the Poppaeas, the Messalinas, the Agrippinas-the days in which, as told in Bab. Jômah, f. 18, 2, that Rabbi Nachman, whenever he went to stay at a town for a short time, openly sent round the crier for a wife during his abode there (Lightfoot, Hor. Heb. in loc.). See Excursus III., "Jesus and Hillel;" and Excursus IX., "Hypocrisy of the Pharisees." LAXITY OF DIVORCE. 153 Seneca says, women no longer reckoned their years by the consuls, but by the number of their repudiated husbands. The Jews had caught up the shameful precedent, and since polygamy had fallen into discredit, they made a near approach to it by the ease with which they were able to dismiss one wife and take another.1 Even Josephus, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, who on every possible occasion prominently lays claim to the character and position of a devout and religious man, narrates, without the shadow of an apology, that his first wife had abandoned him, that he had divorced the second after she had borne him three children, and that he was then married to a third. But if Jesus decided in favour of Shammai-as all His previous teaching made the Pharisees feel sure that in this particular question He would decide-then He would be pronouncing the public opinion that Herod Antipas was a double-dyed adulterer, an adulterer adulterously wedded to an adulterous wife. But Jesus was never guided in any of His answers by principles of expediency, and was decidedly indifferent alike to the anger of multitudes and to the tyrant's frown. His only object was to give, even to such inquirers as these, such answers as should elevate them to a nobler sphere. Their axiom, "Is it lawful?" had it been sincere, would have involved the 1 Divorce is still very common among the Eastern Jews; in 1856 there were sixteen cases of divorce among the small Jewish population of Jerusalem. In fact, a Jew may divorce his wife at any time and for any cause, he being himself the sole judge; the only hindrance is that, to prevent divorces in a mere sudden fit of spleen, the bill of divorce must have the concurrence of three Rabbis, and be written on ruled vellum, containing neither more nor less than twelve lines; and it must be given in the prosence of ten witnesses. (Allen's Mod. Judaism, p. 428.) Nothing is lawful to answer to their own question. any man who doubts its lawfulness. instead of answering them, directs them to the source where the true answer was to be found. Setting the primitive order side by side with the Mosaic institution-meeting their "Is it lawful?" with "Have ye not read?"-He reminds them that God, who at the beginning had made man male and female, had thereby signified His will that marriage should be the closest and most indissoluble of all relationships1-transcending and even, if necessary, superseding all the rest. "Why, then," they ask-eager to entangle Him in an opposition to "the fiery law"-" did Moses command to give a writing of divorcement and put her away?" The form of their question involved one of those false turns so common among the worshippers of the letter; and on this false turn they based their inverted pyramid of yet falser inferences. And so Jesus at once corrected them: "Moses, indeed, for your hardheartedness permitted you to put away your wives; but from the beginning it was not so;" and then he adds as formal and fearless a condemnation of Herod Antipas-without naming him-as could have been put in language, "Whoever putteth away his wife and marrieth another, except for fornication, committeth adultery; and he who marrieth the divorced woman committeth adultery:"2 and Herod's case was the worst conceivable instance of both forms of adultery, for he, while married to an innocent and undivorced wife, had wedded the guilty 1 Gen. ii. 24. "They two" is in the LXX., but not in the Hebrew. 2 It appears from St. Matthew that Jesus uttered this precept to the Pharisees, as well as confided it afterwards to His disciples. See Matt. xix. 9; Mark x. 11 (vide supra, p. 127). |