So that they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, don’t let man tear apart.”
Short answer
Jesus taught that marriage is meant to be lifelong: “What therefore God has joined together, don’t let man tear apart.” Matthew records an exception for sexual immorality, and Paul addresses a marriage with an unbelieving spouse who leaves. Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches apply these texts differently. No passage requires anyone to stay in danger.
Before anything else
If you are in a marriage where you or your children are being hurt, threatened or controlled, your safety comes first. No passage of Scripture requires anyone to remain in danger, and Christian teachers of every tradition agree that a person may leave an abusive situation; Catholic teaching, for example, recognizes that spouses may separate. Please reach out for help. In the United States, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available at any hour at 1-800-799-7233, or by texting START to 88788. If you are in immediate danger, call 911 or your local emergency number.
If you have been through a divorce, this page is not written to judge you. Many readers come to it carrying grief, and Scripture says that “the LORD is near to those who have a broken heart” (Psalm 34:18).
The Law of Moses
The Old Testament assumes that divorce happened and regulates it. Deuteronomy requires a husband who sends his wife away to give her a written certificate, which left her free to remarry, and forbids him to take her back after she has married someone else:
When a man takes a wife and marries her, then it shall be, if she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some unseemly thing in her, that he shall write her a certificate of divorce, put it in her hand, and send her out of his house. When she has departed out of his house, she may go and be another man’s wife. If the latter husband hates her, and writes her a certificate of divorce, 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; her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife after she is defiled; for that would be an abomination to the Lord. You shall not cause the land to sin, which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance.
In Jesus’ day, Jewish teachers debated what “some unseemly thing” in verse 1 meant. One school allowed divorce for almost any cause; another limited it to serious sexual wrongdoing. That debate is the background to the question the Pharisees put to Jesus.
Malachi
The prophet Malachi rebukes men who have “dealt treacherously” with “the wife of your youth” (Malachi 2:14–15). Verse 16 is difficult in Hebrew, and translations differ. Some older English versions have God saying that He hates divorce. The World English Bible, Catholic Edition, like many modern translations, reads it as a condemnation of the man who divorces:
One who hates and divorces”, says the Lord, the God of Israel, “covers his garment with violence!” says the Lord of Armies. “Therefore pay attention to your spirit, that you don’t be unfaithful.
On either reading, the prophet’s concern is a husband’s faithlessness toward a wife he has abandoned.
Jesus’ teaching
When the Pharisees ask whether a man may divorce his wife “for any reason,” Jesus takes them back to creation:
He answered, “Haven’t you read that He who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall be joined to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh’? So that they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, don’t let man tear apart.”
When they ask why Moses commanded a certificate of divorce, He answers that Moses allowed it “because of the hardness of your hearts,” and that “from the beginning it has not been so” (Matthew 19:7–9). Mark’s account follows the same course, without the exception discussed below, and has two details of its own: the man who divorces his wife and marries another “commits adultery against her,” treating the wife as the one wronged, and a woman who divorces her husband and remarries is under the same rule (Mark 10:2–12). Jesus also speaks of divorce in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:31–32) and in Luke 16:18.
The exception clause
In Matthew, and only in Matthew, Jesus says that whoever divorces his wife “except for sexual immorality” and marries another commits adultery (Matthew 19:9; compare Matthew 5:32). The Greek word, porneia, is broad, and Christians read the clause differently:
- Many Protestants understand it to permit divorce, and usually remarriage, when a spouse has committed adultery.
- Many Catholic interpreters understand porneia here to mean a union that was unlawful from the start, such as a marriage within forbidden degrees of kinship, so that the clause does not describe the ending of a valid marriage. Others, in several traditions, read it as allowing separation but not remarriage.
Paul’s teaching
Paul repeats the Lord’s command that spouses should not separate, and adds that a wife who leaves should remain unmarried or be reconciled (1 Corinthians 7:10–11). Then he addresses a situation Jesus had not: a believer married to an unbeliever. The believer should not leave, but:
Yet if the unbeliever departs, let there be separation. The brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God has called us in peace.
How the churches apply these texts
- Catholic teaching holds that a valid sacramental marriage between baptized Christians, once consummated, cannot be dissolved by any human power. Separation can be legitimate, including for safety, and a civil divorce can be tolerated for legal reasons, while the marriage bond itself remains. A Church tribunal may examine a marriage and issue a declaration of nullity (often called an annulment), which finds that a valid marriage never came into being; it is not a Catholic divorce. The Church also applies 1 Corinthians 7:15 in a limited case known as the Pauline privilege.
- Orthodox churches regard marriage as lifelong, but permit a second marriage in some circumstances as an act of pastoral mercy, with a more penitential form of the service.
- Protestant churches vary. Many permit divorce for adultery or abandonment, drawing on Matthew 19:9 and 1 Corinthians 7:15; some also treat serious abuse as grounds for divorce; some permit remarriage after divorce, and some do not.
Divorce by itself does not separate a Catholic from the sacraments. Questions about remarriage, annulment or a particular situation are best taken to a priest or pastor, who can listen to the whole story. This page is not legal advice; for legal questions, speak with a qualified lawyer.
Where to go next
The Love & relationships pages gather Scripture on love and marriage, and Difficult times offers passages for hard seasons.