God wants us to work for the purposes he intended for the world before it was marred by sin. Matthew introduces the setting of Jesus' debate in a manner similar to Mark 10:1, but again notes Jesus' healings (19:1-2). The religious elite, perhaps provoked again by Jesus' indisputable signs (compare 9:34; 12:14, 24; 14:36-15:1; 15:38; 16:1), try to lure him into a debate on the sorts of issues in which they had sharpened their own debating skills.

The two main schools of Pharisaic teachers debated the meaning of Deuteronomy 24:1, in which a man finds "any matter of indecency" (my translation) in his wife and hence divorces her. The School of Shammai interpreted Deuteronomy 24 as indicating that a man could divorce his wife for the cause of unfaithfulness ("indecency"); the School of Hillel understood the passage to mean that a man could divorce his wife for any cause, even burning his toast ("any matter"-m. Gittin 9:10; Sipre Deut. 269.1.1). In practice both schools agreed that the law at least often granted the man a right to divorce, regrettable as divorce was (as in b. Sanhedrin 22a).

Jesus, however, circumvents their whole argument based on Deuteronomy 24. The ultimate issue should not be the right to divorce, but God's original desire for husbands and wives to be one flesh (compare Belkin 1940:231); "one flesh" is the language of family ties and alliances (as in 2 Sam 5:1). The Genesis principle from which Jesus draws this application goes beyond opposing divorce; it opposes marital disharmony altogether. Indeed, the purpose of the Deuteronomy 24 law itself was probably "to check haste in divorce" (Gundry 1982:380), hence to provide some legal protection for the wife (Luck 1987:109; compare Coiner 1968:368-69). Jesus' call to follow and proclaim him comes first (Mt 10:34-39; 19:27-30), but one's relationship with a spouse must take priority over any other relationship but one's relationship with Christ.

Although his opponents claim Scripture for their purposes, Jesus challenges their actual knowledge of Scripture by showing that they are proof texting rather than reading it in light of God's whole plan: Haven't you read . . . ? (v. 4; compare 12:3; 21:16, 42; 22:31). Some Pharisees might have considered Jesus "liberal" (as we would put it) in his interpretations, but his objection was not to Scripture but to human traditions of interpretation (15:2-9; compare 5:17-20; 8:4; 22:24, 32); here he even attributes a saying of the biblical narrator directly to God (19:4-5; J. Wenham 1977:28).