Gospel of Sunday, 06 October: Mark 10:2-16
XXVII Sunday Year B
2 And when the Pharisees came near, to test him, they asked him, ‘Is it lawful for a husband to repudiate his wife?’ 3 But he answered them, ‘What has Moses commanded you?’ 4 They said, ‘Moses permitted to write a deed of repudiation and to send her back.’ 5 Jesus said to them, ‘Because of the hardness of your hearts he wrote this rule for you. 6 But at the beginning of creation God created them male and female; 7 therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother, and the two shall be one flesh. 8 So that they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 Let no man therefore separate what God has joined together.’ 10 When they had returned home, the disciples questioned him again on this subject. And he said, 11 ‘Whoever repudiates his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; 12 if a woman repudiates her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.
13 They presented children to him to caress, but the disciples scolded them. 14 When Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, ‘Let the children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such as are like them belongs the kingdom of God. 15 Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it. 16 And taking them in his arms and laying his hands upon them he blessed them.Mk 10:2-16
Dear sisters and brothers of Misericordia, I am Carlo Miglietta, a doctor, biblical scholar, layman, husband, father and grandfather (www.buonabibbiaatutti.it). Also today I share with you a short thought meditation on the Gospel, with special reference to the theme of mercy.
Deuteronomy had granted the husband the possibility of divorce if he found in his wife ‘something improper’, eruat dabar (Deut 24:1). But on the interpretation of eruat dabar, two schools were established in the time of Jesus: that of Rabbi Shammai, who allowed divorce only in the case of adultery, and that of Rabbi Hillel, according to whom any reason was sufficient to repudiate the spouse: it was enough that the wife had let a dish burn, or that she had lost her youthful beauty, or that the husband had found himself a more pleasing companion.
The Pharisees approached Jesus to see which of the two theological currents he sided with. For them, it was a given that Jesus allowed divorce, since it was explicitly provided for in the Law; the problem, according to them, was whether he allowed it only in the case of adultery, like Rabbi Shammai, or ‘for any reason’ (Mt 19:3), like Rabbi Hillel.
Jesus displaces everyone, stating that divorce was granted only because of Israel’s sclerocardium, the ‘hardness of heart’ (Mk 10:5), a concept equivalent to the Hebrew orlat lebab, man’s closure to God’s plan. Jesus therefore affirms that God’s plan for marriage is not to be found in Deuteronomy, but in the very book of Genesis, whose Hebrew name is Bereshit, ‘In the beginning’: the Jews did not call the books of Scripture by the names we have given them, but by the first words of the book itself, and Genesis in fact begins: ‘In the beginning God created…’ (Gen 1:1). ‘But ‘in the beginning’ (ed: that is, in the book of Genesis) … God created them male and female: therefore the man shall leave his father and his mother, and the two shall be one flesh. Therefore they are no longer two, but one flesh. Let no man therefore separate what God has joined together (ed: synèuzeuxen: ‘he yoked together’, symbolic language referring to the yoke of two)’ (Mk 10:6-9). Notice how Jesus quotes from Gen 2:24 not the Hebrew text (‘and they…’), but the Greek text of the LXX (‘the two…’), which is already a strong interpretation in a monogamous sense, even proposing, as we have seen, a mathematical illogic: ‘two equals one’! It is God himself who makes the two a unity, inseparable and indissoluble: he who attends to the unity of marriage rejects God’s creation project.
Unlike the text of the Gospel of Mark and that of Luke, the parallel passage of Matthew presents, along with the rejection of divorce, the famous aside that has caused so much discussion: ‘Whoever repudiates his wife, except in the case of porneìa, and marries another commits adultery (moichàtai)’ (Mt 19:9). Surely porneìa is not concubinage, as the 1971 Italian Bishops’ Conference Bible translated it, because it is hard to see why the evangelist should make a specific exception for something obvious.
Some, such as the Orthodox or Reformed churches, saw adultery in this porneìa, and find here permission to divorce in such a case. But in this sense we would have expected another term, moicheìa, whose root returns in the verb used at the end of the verse (moichàtai, ‘commits adultery’). Moreover, the whole passage would no longer make sense, since Jesus would only be siding with the school of Rabbi Shammai, which only granted divorce in the case of adultery, and one would no longer understand either his opposition to the Mosaic law or the astonishment manifested in response by the disciples: ‘If this is the condition of a man in relation to a woman, it is not fitting for him to marry’ (Mt 19:10).
The most reliable exegesis today points out that the incision of porneìa appears only in the Gospel of Matthew, who wrote for the converted Jews of the communities of Palestine and Syria: They continued to adhere to Jewish customs that forbade zenut, or ‘prostitution’ according to rabbinic writings, i.e. those unions considered incestuous because they were marked by a degree of kinship forbidden in the book of Leviticus (Lev 18:6-18), such as marriage with a stepmother or half-sister, unions that were often instead permitted by Roman legislation. Hence the conclusion of the Council of Jerusalem, which established for all the need to abstain also ‘from porneìa’ (Acts 15:20, 29), that is, from those unions that, although considered valid in Roman law, were to be considered null and void, because incestuous, according to Jewish legislation: in this case, the Christian could not only dissolve the union but, as it was not a valid marriage, he had the duty to get rid of it. It would be the same porneìa against which Paul would rage, condemning ‘at the mercy of Satan such a one cohabiting with his father’s wife’ (1 Cor 5:1-5). Accepting this interpretation, the 2008 Bible of the Italian Bishops’ Conference translates porneìa as “illegitimate union”.
In any case, ‘the interpolated clause cannot be interpreted as an exception to the absolute indissolubility of marriage’ (E. Schillebeeckx). Further proof of this is the clear affirmation of Paul, who refers not to his own opinion, as in other cases (marriage between believers and non-believers, celibacy…), but to a precise command of the Lord in this regard: ‘I command the married couple, not I, but the Lord: the wife shall not separate from her husband, and if she separates, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled with her husband, and the husband shall not repudiate his wife’ (1 Cor 7:10-11). This will be the unanimous tradition throughout the early Church.
Happy Mercy to all!
Anyone who would like to read a more complete exegesis of the text, or some insights, please ask me at migliettacarlo@gmail.com.