Is Divorce Ever Permissable
The passages offer different marriage rules, ranging from permitted remarriage to prohibitions with different stated exceptions.
- Textual conflict
- Interpretive tension
- The passages pull in different directions, but the conflict depends on how their wording, scope, or narrative context is read.
- Importance
- Foundational
- A central claim about origins, salvation, divine justice, or religious authority.
Permitted remarriage and adultery judgments supply materially different rules, with differing exceptions that alter what people facing divorce may do.
An editorial assessment of the quoted passages. Importance describes the stakes; it does not increase certainty. Reading order weighs both.
Moses permits divorce paperwork and a subsequent marriage
When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her 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.
Matthew's prohibition includes an exception for fornication
But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.
And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.
Paul permits an unbelieving spouse to leave
But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us to peace.
Other sayings condemn divorce and remarriage without an exception
Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
And he saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her.
Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery.
Understanding the contradiction
Deuteronomy 24:1-2 allows a husband who finds uncleanness in his wife to give her a divorce document and send her away. It expressly permits her to become another man's wife. Matthew 5:32 and Matthew 19:9 instead associate divorce and remarriage with adultery, while making an exception for fornication. The practical difference concerns whether a subsequent marriage is allowed or constitutes sexual wrongdoing.
Mark 10:11 and Luke 16:18 state the condemnation without Matthew's exception. Matthew 19:6 more broadly forbids separating what God has joined. Meanwhile, 1 Corinthians 7:15 permits an unbelieving partner to depart and says the believer is not under bondage in that situation. That verse addresses departure directly but does not expressly authorize remarriage, so its freedom should not be given a more precise scope than the quotation supplies. The collection nevertheless gives materially different rules for people facing marital breakdown. Its permitted grounds, treatment of separation, and judgment on a new marriage cannot be reduced to one unqualified instruction without changing the wording of some passages.