Ulangan 24:3

24:3 If the second husband rejects ¹  her and then divorces her, ²  gives her the papers, and evicts her from his house, or if the second husband who married her dies,

Ulangan 24:2

24:2 When she has left him ³  she may go and become someone else’s wife.

1 Raja-raja 17:6

17:6 The ravens would bring him bread and meat each morning and evening, and he would drink from the stream.

Yesaya 50:1

50:1 This is what the Lord says:

“Where is your mother’s divorce certificate

by which I divorced her?

Or to which of my creditors did I sell you? ⁴ 

Look, you were sold because of your sins; ⁵ 

because of your rebellious acts I divorced your mother. ⁶ 

Yeremia 3:8

3:8 She also saw ⁷  that I gave wayward Israel her divorce papers and sent her away because of her adulterous worship of other gods. ⁸  Even after her unfaithful sister Judah had seen this, ⁹  she still was not afraid, and she too went and gave herself like a prostitute to other gods. ¹⁰ 

Maleakhi 2:16

2:16 “I hate divorce,” ¹¹  says the Lord God of Israel, “and the one who is guilty of violence,” ¹²  says the Lord who rules over all. “Pay attention to your conscience, and do not be unfaithful.”

Matius 1:19

1:19 Because Joseph, her husband to be, ¹³  was a righteous man, and because he did not want to disgrace her, he intended to divorce her ¹⁴  privately.

[24:3]  ¹ tn Heb “hates.” See note on the word “other” in Deut 21:15.

[24:3]  ² tn Heb “writes her a document of divorce.”

[24:2]  ³ tn Heb “his house.”

[50:1]  ⁴ sn The Lord challenges the exiles (Zion’s children) to bring incriminating evidence against him. The rhetorical questions imply that Israel accused the Lord of divorcing his wife (Zion) and selling his children (the Israelites) into slavery to pay off a debt.

[50:1]  ⁵ sn The Lord admits that he did sell the Israelites, but it was because of their sins, not because of some debt he owed. If he had sold them to a creditor, they ought to be able to point him out, but the preceding rhetorical question implies they would not be able to do so.

[50:1]  ⁶ sn The Lord admits he did divorce Zion, but that too was the result of the nation’s sins. The force of the earlier rhetorical question comes into clearer focus now. The question does not imply that a certificate does not exist and that no divorce occurred. Rather, the question asks for the certificate to be produced so the accuser can see the reason for the divorce in black and white. The Lord did not put Zion away arbitrarily.

[3:8]  ⁷ tc Heb “she [‘her sister, unfaithful Judah’ from the preceding verse] saw” with one Hebrew ms, some Greek mss, and the Syriac version. The MT reads “I saw” which may be a case of attraction to the verb at the beginning of the previous verse.

[3:8]  ⁸ tn Heb “because she committed adultery.” The translation is intended to spell out the significance of the metaphor.

[3:8]  ⁹ tn The words “Even after her unfaithful sister, Judah, had seen this” are not in the Hebrew text but are implicit in the connection and are supplied for clarification.

[3:8]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “she played the prostitute there.” This is a metaphor for Israel’s worship; she gave herself to the worship of other gods like a prostitute gives herself to her lovers. There seems no clear way to completely spell out the metaphor in the translation.

[2:16]  ¹¹ tc The verb שָׂנֵא (sane’) appears to be a third person form, “he hates,” which makes little sense in the context, unless one emends the following word to a third person verb as well. Then one might translate, “he [who] hates [his wife] [and] divorces her…is guilty of violence.” A similar translation is advocated by M. A. Shields, “Syncretism and Divorce in Malachi 2,10-16,” ZAW 111 (1999): 81-85. However, it is possible that the first person pronoun אָנֹכִי (’anokhi, “I”) has accidentally dropped from the text after כִּי (ki). If one restores the pronoun, the form שָׂנֵא can be taken as a participle and the text translated, “for I hate” (so NAB, NASB, NRSV, NLT).

[2:16]  sn Though the statement “I hate divorce” may (and should) be understood as a comprehensive biblical principle, the immediate context suggests that the divorce in view is that of one Jewish person by another in order to undertake subsequent marriages. The injunction here by no means contradicts Ezra’s commands to Jewish men to divorce their heathen wives (Ezra 9–10).

[2:16]  ¹² tn Heb “him who covers his garment with violence” (similar ASV, NRSV). Here “garment” is a metaphor for appearance and “violence” a metonymy of effect for cause. God views divorce as an act of violence against the victim.

[1:19]  ¹³ tn Grk “husband.” See following note for discussion.

[1:19]  ¹⁴ tn Or “send her away.”

[1:19]  sn In the Jewish context, “full betrothal was so binding that its breaking required a certificate of divorce, and the death of one party made the other a widow or widower (m. Ketub. 1:2; m. Sota 1:5; m. Git. passim…)” (R. H. Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on his Literary and Theological Art, 21).