BibleProject Guides

Murder, Adultery, and Divorce

Imagine a world where everyone treats each other with dignity and respect. And when problems do arise, everyone works hard to do right by each other. In the Bible, this way of treating each other is called righteousness. It sounds great, but how are we supposed to know how to do right by others? Jesus, like any Israelite teacher, believed that you can learn righteousness through studying God's wisdom in the ancient Scriptures, the Torah and the Prophets. Jesus believed that meditating on the laws given to ancient Israel would reveal God’s wisdom.

The Bible’s ancient laws can teach us how to do right by each other, even today. Jesus illustrates this in the Sermon on the Mount by quoting a command from the Torah and then revealing God's wisdom underneath the command.

In this guide, you can explore Jesus’ teaching about anger, lust, and divorce alongside related videos, podcast episodes, and more.

Wisdom Within Laws About Murder, Adultery, and Divorce

8:16 • Sermon on the Mount

Context

Matthew 5:21-32 offers the first three of six case studies on righteousness in the Sermon on the Mount. The events described in Matthew take place in Jerusalem, Judea, and the surrounding occupied lands of the Greco-Roman Empire between 10 B.C.E. and 40 C.E. The book was likely composed between 50 and 90 C.E.

Literary Styles

Matthew 5:21-32, and the Sermon on the Mount as a whole, is written in the literary style of prose discourse.

Key Themes

Right relating or “righteousness”
Murder, anger, and name-calling
Adultery and lust

Structure

Matthew 5:17-48 comprises a large midsection of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus teaches right ways of relating to one another that fulfill God’s ancient law. Within this section, in Matthew 5:21-48, Jesus offers six case studies on right relationships. In each case study, he quotes a command from the Torah and then expands on its common interpretation. In Matthew 5:21-32, Jesus gives the first three (of six) case studies on murder and anger, adultery and lust, and divorce and remarriage.

Murder and Anger

Jesus starts this section of the Sermon on the Mount with a pretty intense topic, murder.

“You have heard that it was said to the ancients, you shall not commit murder.”

Matthew 5:21 Keep Reading

He's quoting from the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:13 here. And he goes on to say:

“And I say to you, that anyone who is angry with his brother will be guilty by the court; and whoever calls his brother ‘good-for-nothing!’ will be guilty by the sanhedrin; and whoever says ‘fool!’ will be guilty of the fire of gehenna.”

Matthew 5:22 Keep Reading

Jesus is equating anger and name-calling with murder. Obviously, murdering someone is worse than getting angry and calling someone a name. But that's not Jesus’ point. He is provocatively showing how murder, anger, and verbal abuse are all surface manifestations of something deeper. All of these actions reveal how much we value someone's existence.

For example, murder is the ultimate way of saying that someone's life doesn't matter. But losing your temper or belittling someone communicates the same thing. These actions all reveal an attitude of superiority and contempt for another person. This behavior wreaks havoc in our relationships and communities, and it's worthy of serious consequences. Jesus’ point here is that the wisdom of this command is about way more than just murder.

For Jesus, this command is about treating everyone as valuable. He wants us to see that any time we demean or devalue other people, it's a failure to do right by them. And Jesus’ definition of righteousness is treating everybody as a fellow image of God.

Adultery and Lust

The next case study is about adultery.

“You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery.”

Matthew 5:27 Keep Reading

Again, Jesus is quoting from the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:14. He next says:

“And I say to you that everyone who keeps on staring at a woman in order to stir up sexual desire, he's already committed adultery with her and his heart.”

Matthew 5:28 Keep Reading

Jesus isn’t talking about merely finding someone attractive. He’s talking about the long, creepy stare, objectifying someone and looking at them like they exist for your own pleasure. When we do this, we are stripping a fellow human of their God-given dignity, even if we keep our hands to ourselves. In fact, this habit is so serious to Jesus, he goes on to say:

“If your right eye causes your downfall, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into gehenna. If your right hand causes your downfall, cut it off and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to go off into gehenna.”

Matthew 5:29-30 Keep Reading

Jesus was the master of hyperbole. This imagery is his way of communicating that the real problem is in our hearts, not in our eyes or hands. But he's making clear that the stakes for this type of behavior are high.

It's important to remember that Jesus was raised on the Hebrew Scriptures, which portray sex as a beautiful thing (See Gen. 2:19-25; Song of Songs). But if sexual desire is causing us to dishonor the image of God in others or in ourselves, or if it’s causing breakdown in our relationships, it’s actually harming us. And we need to do whatever it takes to correct this behavior.

Divorce and Remarriage

The third case study is on divorce. Jesus says:

“It has also been said, whoever sends away his wife, he must give her a certificate of divorce.”

Matthew 5:31 Keep Reading

The context here is that in Jesus’ day, only Israelite men could initiate a divorce. And that imbalance led to all kinds of problems. Divorce was allowed, but only one law in the entire Torah addressed the issue, and Jesus just quoted from it. The law said that if a man initiates a divorce, he has to do it in the proper way and for a legitimate reason.

“When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens, if she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, that he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her away from his house. And she leaves his house and goes and becomes another man’s wife. And the latter husband turns against her, writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand, and sends her away from his house. Or if the latter husband who took her to be his wife dies, then her former husband who sent her away is not allowed to take her again to be his wife, after 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 is giving you as an inheritance.

Deuteronomy 24:1-4 Keep Reading

So based on this law, what was a legitimate reason that a man could divorce his wife? This was actually a hot debate in Jesus’ day. According to some Torah scholars, this law allowed for divorce only in the case of adultery. But other Torah scholars argued that the law allowed a man to divorce his wife for any reason, even dissatisfaction with the marriage.

If a man could threaten divorce for any reason, that would lead to women being oppressed, vulnerable, and even abused. To protect women, Jesus sided with those who limited legitimate divorce to cases of adultery. And he makes this clear when he says:

“And I say to you, any man who sends away his wife except for a case of sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery.”

Matthew 5:32 Keep Reading

What does it mean for a man to “make her the victim of adultery”? Jesus is being provocative again, saying that if a man divorces his wife for an illegitimate reason—because he’s tired of the marriage or just wants to be with somebody else—his marriage covenant is actually still intact. And that means that any new marriage is an act of adultery. And notice, Jesus explicitly assigns blame to the men in his culture because it’s their selfish choices that are forcing women into these vulnerable situations.

You can see how this could play out in a society where only men can initiate divorce for any reason. This could normalize the oppression of women on a large scale. So in his cultural context, Jesus’ statement protects and elevates the dignity of women as images of God.

But what about other ways a marriage covenant can be violated, like neglect or abuse? Would those be legitimate reasons for divorce? These are really important questions that Jesus doesn’t address. His focus here is on how this one debated divorce law in the Torah was being twisted and misused by the men of his day. For Jesus, the marriage covenant is designed to create interdependence and mutual respect so that the two can reflect God’s image together as one.

God's Wisdom for How We Treat People

In all three of these case studies, Jesus is showing how God’s wisdom in these commands is aimed at our core desires and motivations that affect how we treat people. Someone could strictly follow these rules about murder, adultery, and divorce but still dishonor and objectify people in other ways. Real righteousness and wisdom mean treating every human like they have ultimate value.

If we valued others that much, imagine what kind of world we could create? This is exactly what Jesus had in mind. His announcement about the arrival of God's heavenly Kingdom here on Earth was meant to reshape our imaginations. God’s wisdom invites us to honor the image of God in every person that we meet.

The Big Idea

The Old Testament laws about murder, adultery, and divorce reveal God’s wisdom about how we treat others. Jesus teaches that righteousness means treating all humans with dignity because we are all made in the image of God.