Adultery, Divorce and Remarriage with a Living Spouse
What Do Yahuah and Mashiach Yahusha Say?
If you want to get into a heated debate with most “Christians” today, bring up the topic of adultery, divorce and remarriage! We all have family, friends….people we truly love that are in an extra marital affair, they have committed adultery, divorced their spouse, having marital relations with another or they have remarried and divorced their original spouse, and for some people, that person may be themselves. I remember a time when the majority of the preachers and deacons that I knew believed and enforced that if you had been married, divorced and had a living spouse and then got remarried that you could not hold a position as a trustee, deacon or pastor and most pastors wouldn’t marry anyone that had a living spouse. Now, the church is full of trustees, deacons and pastors who have two or more living spouses and it is preached from the pulpit that as long as you give your spouse a lawful divorce that they are no longer your spouse and you are free to remarry. But, is this actually what Yahuah and Mashiach Yahusha say?
I have written a couple of papers on this subject and there always seems to still be a great deal of confusion as to what I am actually trying to say. So I am not going to say anything of myself but will elaborate on what the Word of Yahuah says found in the Ivriy Scriptures, what most people call the Bible. For the purposes of this study/sermon, I will be using the Masoretic Text as found in the Interlinear Bible 2nd Edition Copyright 1986; Bible Hub .com Interlinear ( https://biblehub.com/interlinear/ ); The New Strong’s Expanded Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible Copyright 2010; and the את Cepher Millenium Edition Copyright 2021.
Now, as I stated before, I have preached a sermon or two, written one paper on this subject and most people at the end of them were still confused as to what I was trying to relate to them from the written word of Yahuah found in the Ivriy Scriptures. So before we go any further, let me tell you plainly, up front, what the scriptures say to me after being led by the Ruach Ha’qodesh in my hours of studying this subject:
“If you marry someone, you cannot have marital relationships with anyone else or remarry another person as long as the first person you married is still alive! If you have marital relations with any one other than the person you married, you are breaking wedlock, committing adultery and if you remarry with a living spouse, you are living in broken wedlock, adultery!!”
Now that we have gotten that preliminary hang up out of the way, and if you are still reading, let’s study the Word of Elohiym and reveal what our Father Yahuah says and also what His Son Yahusha Ha’Mashiach says in Ivriy Scriptures
The first time the word adultery is used is in Shemoth (Exodus) 20:14 where it says “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” The word for to commit adultery is Strong’s Hebrew Word (SHW) 5003 תִּֿנְאָֽ֑ף׃ (tnə·’āp) and the definition of this word is “to commit adultery”. That is all well and good but how do you define a word by using itself? Well praise Yahuah, there is one definition of SHW 5003 that doesn’t use itself for the definition and that is the last definition of five, the first four still use the root word adulter, and the definition is “woman that breaks wedlock”. In theאת Cepher the verse actually reads “You shall not break wedlock.” Now for those who may not be old school and have never heard the term wedlock, Merriam-Webster.com online dictionary defines wedlock as “the state of being married” Well I’ll be!! The first time the word is actually used, this misleadingly glamourized word of adultery, it means that you shall not break wedlock. Is it really that plain and simple, you shall not break wedlock? It sure sounds like it to me!
Well, it would seem that we should be able to stop right here with the very simple commandment given by Yahuah in the presence of the assembly of Yashar’el. But we can’t stop here, can we? Well we probably can’t because people are going to say well this other verse says something totally different brother Pat and yes there are other verses that do seem to say different things about this commandment, but the overall truth of the matter is that Yahuah and Yahusha Ha’Mashiach never change. This commandment was not only spoken by Yahuah in the presence of the assembly of believers (Shemoth 20:1), but it was also written by the finger of Elohiym (Shemoth 31:18 ; 32:16). Once again, this should be more than enough to convince anyone that breaking wedlock is a major trespass against Yahuah, but there are those other verses minister Morrow….
The next time SHW 5003 is used is in Vayiqra 20:10 where it says “And the man that breaks wedlock with another man’s wife, even he that breaks wedlock with his neighbour’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.” Okay, this seems to directly support the seventh commandment given, that you shall not break wedlock, and it provides the punishment for this sin. This seventh commandment still seem ridiculously simplistic and straight forward but I can sense the anticipation and the desire to get to the next word in the title of this teaching, which is divorce. That is good because the only other time SHW 5003 is used is in Devariym 5:18 which is the giving of the seventh commandment again by the voice of Yahuah: “Neither shall you break wedlock.” This is the last time a word that SHW 5003 appears in the Torah.
Now that we’ve defined that nasty, heinous word, that is too often secretly glorified in today’s society, out of the way, lets get on to the next word in the title: Divorce. The word divorce is SHW 3748 is כְּרִיתוּת (kə·rî·ṯuṯ) and the definition of this word is “a cutting (of the matrimonial bond), i.e. Divorce – divorce(-ment)” (which is another way to say the breaking of wedlock by a document) and it is used for the first and only time in the Torah in Devariym 24:1-3. Before we go further The statements that Mosheh makes here, in these three verses, are clarified by Yahusha Ha’Mashiach in Mattithyahu 19:8-9 when the Pharisees came to Him, tempting Him, saying “is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?” This is the critical cross reference for the precept that Mosheh wrote in Devariym 24:1-3, and Yahusha plainly tells them Mosheh wrote it because of the hardness of their hearts and then Yahusha goes on to explain how it was from the beginning: Chuah (Eve) was made from A’dam and they were literally the same flesh… “and for this causes shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.” Maybe the connection still isn’t clear to everyone yet, so let’s go back to the definition of SHW 3748 and after the pronunciation of this word, it gives the word SHW 3748 is from, and it is SHW 3772 which means 1. to cut 2. (by implication) to destroy or consume and 3. specifically, to covenant (i.e. make an alliance or bargain, originally by cutting flesh and passing between the pieces). Now we know that adultery means the breaking of wedlock and divorce(ment) is the cutting of the matrimonial bond (or to break wedlock with a document), so if we can now see the connection between these two then let’s add in SHW 3772 and get the trifecta….: Chuah was created from A’dam, she was literally cut out of A’dam and Yahuah instituted the first marital covenant. Yahuah literally passed between the cut pieces of A’dam’s flesh and made the marriage covenant for A’dam and Chuah, just as He passed between the flesh of the sacrifices of Avram to make the covenant with Avram and his descendants. This is why people make the vow, in front of Yahuah, “until death do us part”, they have became one flesh, no longer two and the covenant is until the death of the man or the woman. Yahusha plainly tells the Pharisees that they are no longer two people but now they are one flesh as it was from the beginning and what Elohiym has joined together, let not man separate. The account given in Mattithyahu is also given in Marqus 10:2-12 and it says the exact same thing, the Pharisees came to Him trying to use His words against Him, tempting Him, and Yahusha explained it to them in very simple terms that Mosheh gave them this precept because of the hardness of their hearts but that it was not so from the beginning. Both accounts also tell that the disciples asked Him about this again when they were alone and He plainly tells them in both accounts that a woman who is divorced from her husband cannot remarry under any circumstance or she will be an adulteress.
We should be able to stop right there, shouldn’t we? I think we have clearly shown the link between the original words and how they cannot be used or understood any other way if you look at it from a true Ivriy perspective. The covenant that a man and woman enters into is the same covenant that we, the believer’s and followers of Yahusha Ha’Mashiach have entered into with Father Yahuah to hopefully one day be the bride of His Son Yahusha. This life is a dress rehearsal for our eternal life with Father Yahuah and His Son Yahusha, if we cannot be faithful to our spouses of flesh and blood through this short life, then what makes you think that Yahuah is going to believe you when you say that you want to be His for eternity and you can’t even keep that agreement for the short time you are here?
In the next installment, we will take a deeper look at the two different accounts given by Mattithyahu and Marqus and show how they say exactly the same thing except they were written for two different audiences.