Laws Concerning Divorce

24 “When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and ^(A)he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house,

⁷ They said to him, ^(A)“Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” ⁸ He said to them, “Because of your ^(B)hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. ^9 (C)And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”^[a]

⁴ They said, ^(A)“Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” ⁵ And Jesus said to them, “Because of your ^(B)hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. ⁶ But ^(C)from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them ^(D)male and female.’ ^7 (E)‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife,^{[a] 8} and ^(F)the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. ^9 (G)What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

¹⁰ And in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. ¹¹ And he said to them, ^(H)“Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, ¹² and ^(I)if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

⁸ She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, ^(A)I had sent her away with ^(B)a decree of divorce. ^(C)Yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but she too went ^(D)and played the whore.

Israel's Sin and the Servant's Obedience

²⁹ then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he has violated her. He may not divorce her all his days.

¹⁹ and they shall fine him a hundred shekels^[a] of silver and give them to the father of the young woman, because he has brought a bad name upon a virgin^[b] of Israel. And she shall be his wife. ^(A)He may not divorce her all his days.

Laws Concerning Sexual Immorality

¹³ “If any man takes a wife and ^(A)goes in to her and then hates her

¹¹ (but if she does, ^(A)she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and ^(B)the husband should not divorce his wife.

¹² To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her.