According to some Christian scholars if someone at age 23 gets married and their spouse breaks the covenant and they get divorced or put away and are still separated 5 years later. They must remain unmarried until they die. But is this what the scripture teaches? Marriage is a contract and covenant relationship which is designed to construct our lives in a way that benefits our children and the Kingdom. If you were building and had a contract with a contractor to do the job in a specific way and he breaks the agreement, wouldn’t you get another contractor to finish the job?Marriage was designed by the Almighty to yoke two righteous people together so that they can produce righteous seed for the establishment of the Kingdom of His Kingdom.(Ezra 9)
Mark 10v9, Therefore what The Most High has joined together, let no one separate.” Gen 2v18-24, Proverbs 18 v22..He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the Almighty. The scripture was given to the covenant keeping people of The Most High. The House of Yisreal and Yahudah, not to the gentiles unless they were grafted in.
Not all marriages are joined by Yah
The Scripture is full of divine laws and when they are violated there are consequences. Through out the history of Yisreal they were strongly admonished not to be unequally yoked.
Can two walk together, except they be agreed?
Amos 3 v 3
The Reality is that The enemy tries to join his people to the covenant keeping people of The most High. Therefore not all marriages are joined by The Most High. Only those that are joined in keeping with His word.
Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons,
Deuteronomy 7 v 3
When Balaam tried to curse the children of Israel and was forced to bless them instead, he told the King to let his sons marry their daughters. This was a deliberate strategy to cause division, because he had failed to curse them. The enemy is always working to cause division because he knows how powerful agreement is in the kingdom of Yah. He therefore works overtime to join believers with unbelievers. It is often very difficult to tell who true believers are since the tares and the wheat are growing together.
So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ 28 He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’
Mathew 13 v 24-30
This is why we must seek The Most High for His direction so that we do not become unequally yoked.
Translations are not always accurate
In Hebrew words carry different meanings that sometimes cannot be adequately translated into other languages. And in addition to that translators also had pre-determined biases . As well as sometimes there was no word that exactly fit in the language they were translating to.
Let us look at the Hebrew word that was translated whoring, harlotry, prostitute, adultery, unfaithfulness fornication and going astray.
- H2181 zanah. It is used in Leviticus chapter 17 v 7.
- Leviticus 20 v 5-6
- Deut 31v16. Psalm 73 v 27.
In these examples the same Hebrew word has been translated as prostitute, unfaithful, Idolatry.
Unfaithfulness breaks covenant
“And the Almighty said to Moses: “You are going to rest with your ancestors, and these people will soon prostitute themselves to the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will forsake me and break the covenant I made with them.”
Deut 31 v 16
Clearly this scenario is depicting that when one party was unfaithful, they broke the covenant. When a covenant is broken it is null and void. It is no longer binding. Notice that The Most High made different covenants in the scriptures.However He is always faithful because He cannot be unfaithful.
I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries. . . . Because Israel’s immorality mattered so little to her, she defiled the land and committed adultery with stone and wood.
Jeremiah 3 v 8-10
Israel was the unfaithful wife.This word is not limited to physical whoring, unfaithfulness and Idolatry. It also refers to the spiritual conditions of rebellion and going astray from The Most High as well as your spouse. All unfaithfulness starts in the heart. Proverbs 6v8-9 a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil. Some manifestations of an unfaithful heart is gossip, slander, lusting.
The Person that breaks the covenant is guilty.
From: Eliyah’s online article Divorce and Remarriage
- Mattityahu 5:31-32
It has been said, ‘Whoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a [gift] a certificate of divorce.” Therefore I say to you, that whoever shall put away his wife, except for the cause of fornication [gk:porneia/ heb:zenuth*], causes her to commit adultery, and whoever shall marry her that is undivorced [Aramaic: sh’bikta] commits adultery.
Mattityahu 19:9
And I say to you, Whoever shall divorce his wife, except it be for fornication [gk:porneia/ heb:zenuth*], and shall marry another [gk: alleen], commits adultery; and whoever marries her who has not yet been divorced [Aramaic: sh’bikta] does commit adultery
- sh’bikta means: not yet divorced, or incompletely/improperly divorced.
This passage is explaining that unfaithfulness or putting away is a grounds for divorce. It also is saying that unless a person has been properly divorced they should not remarry. Marriage is a covenant so to remarry without being divorced would be illegal. And it puts the person in the position of being unfaithful to the person they are still married to. Making them a covenant breaker. Usually when a person is unfaithful to their partner they have emotionally and sometimes physically distanced themselves already. Which is why Masyach says if man looks at a woman to lust, he has already committed adultery in his heart.
As Yahusha’s manner always was, He corrected the religious leaders’ twistings of the Scripture. They wanted an OK of their idea of it being alright to divorce a wife for whatever reason. However, Yahusha showed that the only valid reasons for divorcing a wife were for adultery and insubordination (chronic) which are BOTH codified as fornication (porneia and zenuth).The Greek word for harlotry, adultery, fornication, whoring
- G4202 Pornea
- Mattityahu 5:31-32
The person who has been put away is free to marry
But if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so. The brother or the sister is not bound in such circumstances; God/Elohim has called us to live in peace. 16 How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or, how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife? 1 cor 7 v 15-16
- Lukas 16:18
18 Whosoever illegitimately divorces his wife, and
marries another, commits adultery: and
whoever marries her that is not divorced [Aramaic: sh’bikta]
from her husband commits adultery.
- sh’bikta means: not yet divorced, or incompletely/improperly divorced.
“The use of this word “porneia” to refer to idolatry is quite frequent throughout the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the “old testament” that was in use at the time. This word family (#4202 “porneia) is used 36 times in the Septuagint.
The husband and wife relationship is meant to exemplify the relationship between Messiah and the assembly. Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, it is hated by The Most High. Saul was removed as King because of rebellion. Usually when a person is being unfaithful they are being rebellious to The Most High as well as their partner. The Holy Spirit usually convicts us when we err, but if we keep on sinning he gives us over to a reprobate mind.
There is a correlation between whoredom/unfaithfulness and rebellion
A remarkable fact is how this word family is used. It is used to describe physical marital unfaithfulness only twice, but it is used to describe the spiritual harlotry/idolatry 36 times!
The complete list of these verses are as follows:
- Genesis 38:24
- Numbers 14:33
- 2 Kings 9:22
- Isaiah 47:10; 57:9; Jeremiah 2:20; 3:2, 9; 13:27
- Ezekiel 16:15, 22, 25, 33f, 36, 41; 23:7f, 11, 14, 17ff, 27, 29, 35; 43:7, 9
- Hosea 1:2; 2:4, 6; 4:11f; 5:4; 6:10
- Micah 1:7; Nah. 3:4.
Hebrew word #2184 “zenuth”, a noun which means “whoredom”.
Out of the 9 times it is used in the “old testament”, it is used to describe idolatry 7 times with the other 2 instances being unclear whether idolatry or literal whoredom is intended.
In consideration of the core meanings of “zenuth” and “porneia”, they certainly could possibly be used to describe literal harlotry. But since “zenuth” and “porneia” are used so frequently to describe idolatry, it is certainly possible Yahushua could have been allowing for divorce when a person is married to a spouse who is an idolater/unbeliever. This is especially true when you consider the Torah based prohibition against marriages to unbelievers, the examples of disastrous marriages to unbelievers, the importance stressed on bearing righteous children of Elohim, the divorce of pagan wives in the book of Ezra, and the fact that Yahushua said it was the hardness of hearts that inspired Moshe to not outright forbid divorce.”