What does hardness of heart mean and what does it have to do with divorce?

Some Jewish leaders asked Jesus why Moses gave the command to issue a certificate of divorce to terminate a marriage. Jesus responded by saying “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives.”  But exactly what does “Hardness of heart” mean in Matthew 19:8? (also found in Mark 10:5)

This text presents an interpretational challenge for a variety of reasons and has been interpreted many different ways over the years. Among several other difficulties, it is not immediately clear (1) whose hard heart Jesus was referring to, and (2) why this (spiritual) heart condition called for the allowance of divorce. 

Could Jesus have meant that the offended spouse in a marriage damaged by infidelity can be so emotionally wounded that reconciliation might be exceedingly difficult? Could He have meant that the offending spouse is likely too hardened to ever repent, or as some put it, “Once a cheater, always a cheater?” 

This article is written to be a help navigate this passage by bringing to light relevant issues in 1st Century Judaism and some logical questions that aid in clarification. The interpretation I suggest is neither of the two possibilities listed above. Jesus is not referring to either spouse in a given troubled marriage, but explaining the reasoning behind the law passage in question (Deuteronomy 24:1-4) in response to the Pharisees’ attempted trap. 

It’s a Trap!

The introduction to the conversation, in verse 3, says “Some Pharisees came to Jesus, testing Him…”  This is the same word Matthew uses to refer to Satan in Chapter 4, “the tempter,” and is also the same word expressing the fact that Jesus was led by the Spirit to the wilderness “to be tempted.” 

What were the Pharisees hoping to do by this “test?” The next section covers a particular divorce-related controversy that was happening between different branches of Judaism in the first century. By pushing Jesus to pick a side in the debate they would either cause Him to lose favor with the people, or be found guilty of rejecting the Torah by Jewish leaders. In any case, whatever follows in this conversation, it is paramount to recognize that Jesus’ words are responding to a subversive tactic by those who opposed Him. This passage is not part of a teaching to His disciples, nor is it part of a sermon on divorce. What follows is Jesus’ response to an attack, and the response is as subversive as the attack. Jesus rarely ever responded the way people expected Him to, and He often turns the tables on those with ulterior motives.

The “Any Matter” Divorce Controversy in First Century Judaism

The question the Pharisees ask refers to an ongoing debate within the ranks of Jewish leaders in the 1st Century over what grounds for divorce are legally justified. Two dominant rabbinic schools, Hillel and Shammai, disagreed as to whether one could obtain a divorce “for any matter” (a reference to the language of Deut. 24:1), or only for adultery. When the Pharisees use the words, “for any reason,” they are using the language of this particular debate, and are now trying to drag Jesus into it. 

An Unexpected Response

How Jesus chose to respond to the trap question ignores the point of the question and rather takes aim directly at the heart of the reason they would ask or even be concerned about such a thing. His initial response is certainly not what they were expecting.

Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? “So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”

This scripture quotation is one most of us have heard so many times we glance over it without really thinking about it. In so doing we breeze past some very strange reasoning. There is an odd logical connection in the quote we must consider. Jesus says (quoting Gen. 2:24) “For this reason…” The “reason” is “He who created them…made them male and female.” 

Here’s another way of putting this. If someone asked “Why will a man leave his parents and be joined to his wife, with whom he will become as one flesh?” the answer is, “Because the Creator made them male and female.” That is the logic of the statement. 

But how is “the Creator made them male and female,” the reason why a man leaves his parents and joins to his wife to become one? 

The answer has to do with an aspect of humanity that reflects the divine nature as a singular plurality.

Genesis 1:26a says,

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness…

Then verse 27 says, 

God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

The relationship between the male and female genders is directly related to humanity being created in God’s likeness. Two becoming one; singular plurality. The design of how humanity is intended to function for reproduction is male and female joined together in a permanent union. A couple has children, and those children leave their parents to be joined to another to continue the cycle, “for this reason.” 

Here is where we have to ask why Jesus responded in this way. The Pharisees, having asked Jesus a question about acceptable grounds for divorce, get a lecture on the image of God in marriage. This is certainly odd at first reading, but the last phrase clarifies why He says this. 

"What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”

Many have taken this statement to be Jesus’ basic approach to divorce as a thing that should never happen. Divorce is always sinful and wrong, there is no justification, and we know this because Jesus says, “What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” Let’s consider this, that if we take this statement as a conclusion and an explanation for the first part of his response to the Pharisees, then, rather than this representing Jesus’ basic teaching that divorce is always wrong, this statement is Jesus undermining the reason why the Pharisees asked their question. This latter view fits much better.

“What God has joined together,” refers to the design of marriage. It is the design and intention of God that a man and a woman be united permanently in love and the reproduction of life, reflecting the image of God as a singular plurality. Therefore, quibbling over the legal minutiae of divorce misses the point entirely, says Jesus. In His response, Jesus is uncovering and attacking the Pharisees’ preoccupation with legalities. A legal procedure does not separate a married couple. Divorce is not caused by a legal process. Stop examining the letter of the Law for a total grasp on the legal particulars, because it completely misses the intent of God in the Law. More on this later.

“Why Then Did Moses Command…”

Seeming to have followed Jesus’ logic, at least in part, the Pharisees argue back with Jesus with what is a very reasonable question. 

"Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away?"

This is a valid point. If a legal procedure does not sever a troubled marriage, why did Moses give this command to give a certificate of divorce and send a wife away? 

The answer is very simple. He didn’t. This command does not exist. No place in the Law of Moses is it commanded or recommended that an Israelite man should issue his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away in order to obtain a divorce. The rabbinical preoccupation with legalities is the reason Jewish teachers interpreted the Scriptures in a way that made them think this command exists, but the command does not exist.

Verse 7 is a reference to Deuteronomy 24:1-4, often called the Jewish law of divorce. In this text Moses says that if a man divorces his wife, and she remarries, she cannot remarry her first husband. There are many more details in the text and it is not nearly as simple as that, (for more on that, see Divorce and “Putting Away”: Different Things? Or are Both Divorce?) but that is the basic thrust of the passage. At no point in the text is the legal procedure for obtaining a divorce specified. Here’s the text: 

When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out from his house, and she leaves his house and goes and becomes another man’s wife, and if the latter husband turns against her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter husband dies who took her to be his wife, then her former husband who sent her away is not allowed to take her again to be his wife, since she has been defiled; for that is an abomination before the Lord, and you shall not bring sin on the land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance.

So in this passage, the command of Moses is not that if a man wishes to divorce his wife he must issue her a certificate of divorce and send her away, but that if a man divorces his wife (for a justified reason), and then she remarries, and is divorced again (for an unjustified reason, making her a victim), then she cannot remarry her first husband because she is still married in God’s eyes to the second. Again, there is much more to this text than this simple explanation. Please see the linked article above for more on that passage.

The Jewish teachers of the Law had read Deuteronomy 24 wrong all along. Moses never gave a command to issue a certificate of divorce and send the wife away in order to obtain a divorce. This interpretation caused all kinds of problems, one of them being oppression of women, because this reading of Deuteronomy 24 resulted in a rule that only men could initiate a divorce. The point of the divorce certificate was actually to allow the wife to remarry, but this reading of the law kept a women oppressed and powerless. 

Now, we do know that a Jewish wife could appeal to a rabbinic court, who could then force the husband to initiate a divorce, so women weren’t entirely powerless here. However, a law that was designed to empower women in troubled marriages was read in a way that was…well, less than helpful.

Moses Allowed, Not Commanded

Ok, so now we get to verse 8 with Jesus’ response to the Pharisees with the key verse that we’re considering. 

He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way. “And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

Before we get into the “hardness of heart,” notice one detail first. The Pharisees’ last question was, “why did Moses command…” and Jesus’ reply says, “Moses, permitted.” In case it wasn’t clear before that Jesus disagrees with the Jewish interpretation of Deuteronomy 24, here he does not affirm that Moses issued a command regarding divorce, but correctly points out that Moses permitted divorce. Jesus is not affirming their interpretation of Deut 24. 

Ok, so what does Jesus say here? Let’s look at the first part of verse 8. “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.”

The important phrase in this statement is, “but from the beginning it has not been this way.” “From the beginning,” is a reference to the creation account in Genesis. The name “Genesis” is the Latin title for the book, taken from the Greek word referring to existence and being. The Greek word used here for, “the beginning,” is the same word that appears in the Septuagint (Greek translation of the Old Testament) in Genesis 1:1, “the beginning.” So when Jesus says, “because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you divorce, but from the beginning it has not been this way,” Jesus is referring to something that happened in Genesis.

The verse that Jesus quotes from Genesis is at the very end of chapter 2, and of course chapter 3 is where the serpent deceives Eve, the two commit the first sin, and God’s curse falls on humanity and the earth. 

Let’s look back again at the end of Genesis 2:23-25, remembering of course that the chapter and verse divisions are not original. 

The man said,

“This is now bone of my bones,

And flesh of my flesh;

She shall be called Woman,

Because she was taken out of Man.”

For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made…

Verse 25 is a transition verse between the creation of mankind (Adam and Eve), and the story of how the curse came about. This transition statement says “The man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” 

In the Bible, following this event, “nakedness” becomes a euphemism for sexual immorality and shame. Nakedness comes with no shame in God’s design. After sin’s curse falls, nakedness comes with shame. But notice, within God’s design, nakedness still comes with no shame. One of the enjoyments of marriage is the total acceptance and freedom that comes with nakedness in each other’s presence without judgment or fear. Shame is the emotional response to the realization that there is something wrong with you. Your acceptance by a spouse is a shadow of the total acceptance God has for those that belong to Him. In God’s acceptance of us we have total freedom from guilt and shame because we are accepted regardless of what may be wrong with us, because we are accepted on the basis of Christ’s perfection and record and not our own. 

The man and his wife were naked and were without shame. 

This is how it was from the beginning. When Jesus says “from the beginning it was not always this way,” he’s referring to this right here. Marriage was perfect. Two people accepted each other perfectly, accepted on the same level as one’s own body. But this does not always happen now on account of the curse.

Now let’s get into this transition verse, verse 25, and the first verse of Chapter 3. There’s a play on words in the Hebrew text. The word “naked” in verse 25, and the word “crafty” in 3:1 is a pun. The Hebrew word for naked is “aruum” and the Hebrew word for crafty is “arumim.” The reader is intended to see a connection between these two words. 

We typically see “crafty” as meaning intelligent and scheming, and while it does mean that on its surface, there’s a reason for the wordplay. Whatever the man and woman were while naked, the serpent was the opposite. While they had no shame, the serpent was shameful, conniving, and subversive. While the innocent man and woman accepted each other perfectly and completely, the serpent was out to show them their faults and twist their relationship to produce evil rather than good. 

So when Jesus says “because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives, but it was not always this way,” He’s talking about what happened in the Garden that led to the marriage relationship getting twisted by sin’s curse. One of the results of the curse is marital discord. 

In Gen. 3:16 God says to Eve, “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” Some have suggested that the “desire” is a sexual or romantic desire, but in the very next chapter God tells Cane, “sin is crouching at your door and it desires to have you.” That verse uses the same word. In this context it’s referring to a desire to dominate and control. The curse’s effect on marriage is a power struggle. Both want their own way, both point out the other’s faults to try and control them, and only through mutual submission and full acceptance of the other can they function productively and peacefully (this is why the application of the Gospel to marriage in Ephesians 5 is the antidote to this problem). But the natural inclination of the human heart is to dominate and control the other. Why? 

Because sin hardens the heart. 

The hardness of heart is the sin nature. The sin nature causes our hearts to be so inwardly turned, so inclined toward self-interest, that all relationships struggle for health and become difficult. The sin nature refuses to look at truth. The sin nature is preoccupied with legalities in order to justify itself. 

Every mention throughout the Bible about the hardness of heart refers to the refusal to accept truth and insistence on self-interest and self-preservation.

So let’s go back and ask the Pharisees’ question again. “Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away?” 

That’s the wrong question, says Jesus. The right question is why was divorce permitted and not forbidden? Because the human heart is dedicated to self-interest, relationships are extremely difficult, and in a world where some people will never have their eyes opened to let go of their self-interest to embrace the reality of their sin before God, and so will perpetually hurt other people, God chose to not forbid divorce as a mercy on both individuals and on society.  

Can you imagine how bad things would be if divorce was completely forbidden? If people were forced to remain in the worst imaginable circumstances? Woman forced to remain remarried to their abusers, children watching their dad forced to remain married to their manipulative and power hungry mother; girls growing up with mothers who were forced to remain with a serial cheater. If we thought society was going to hell in a handbasket because of a high divorce rate, let’s consider how much worse it would be if the divorce rate was zero. The divorce rate is not our biggest problem. The real problem is our hardness of heart. 

God choosing to not forbid divorce highlights the failure of mankind to love and accept one another as we need, compared to the one relationship that does love and accept us as we need, which is a relationship with Christ. Marriage was designed to show us the love our hearts need to function properly, and for which we were made, and to show us the failure of any human relationship meeting that need. The soulmate view of marriage destroys lives because it’s based on the lie that a spouse will meet our emotional needs, making us happy and secure. As it turns out, there is truly a Soulmate out there, but it is Christ and not any human. 

So because of the power of the sin nature, divorce was permitted as a mercy to individuals and the world. 

The final thing Jesus says in this exchange, in verse 9 is, “And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.” 

This is Jesus’ correction of the rabbinic interpretation of Deuteronomy 24. In Deuteronomy 24 it says if a man divorces a wife due to immorality, and then she remarries, and her second husband divorces her because he doesn’t like her, she can not be remarried to her first husband. Why? Because she’s still married to her second husband. Whatever Jesus means by “immorality” in Matthew 19 here has to mean whatever Moses meant by “he found some indecency in her,” in Deuteronomy 24. And interestingly enough, the literal reading of that phrase in Hebrew “a matter of nakedness,” which shows every element of this whole discussion related to Genesis 2:23-25. 

Jesus’ point is, once again, stop being so concerned about the legalities because it misses the point. What is legally justified for a grounds of divorce is not the point of Deuteronomy 24, and is not the point of Matthew 19. Remarriage following divorce for an immoral cause is acceptable; remarriage following divorce other than for an immoral cause is simply not divorce. The two are still married, because “What God has joined together, let no man separate.” A legal process does not sever a marriage union. An immoral violation of the marriage vow does. 

So when it comes to using Matthew 19 to examine grounds for divorce, we need to pay close attention to what Jesus is saying, because Jesus is saying that the question He was asked misses the point entirely.