Criswell Theological Review 2.1 (1987) 73-84
[Copyright © 1987 by
digitally prepared for use at
Gordon and
DIVORCE IN MALACHI 2:10-16
WALTER C. KAISER, JR.
Mal 2:10-16
is at once one of the most important and one of the
most
difficult pericopes in the book of Malachi. It is
also one of the
most
succinct statements we have on our Lord's attitude toward
divorce.
I. Mal 2:10-16: Its Importance and
Difficulty
The importance of this pericope may be seen in the fact that it
treats the
topic of individual family life from the perspective of its
ties with
the life of the nation, the realm of spiritual development,
and also
as a covenant made in the presence of God. The outbreak of
ethical
problems that this passage attempts to rebuke are: disloyalty
to the
spiritual unity of the national family (
family of
faith (
whom one
pledges covenantal loyalty before God (
evidences of
these disloyalties can be seen in spiritual harlotry, mixed
marriages with
unbelieving partners, adultery, and finally divorce!
Part of the difficulty of this text is the state of the
every
commentator has taken his/her turn bemoaning the difficulties
found in
Mal 2:10-16. This is especially true of v 15 where J. G.
Here the text becomes difficult,
having suffered perhaps at the hand of
scribes who
took exception to its teaching. . . . It is impossible to make
sense of
the Hebrew as it stands and therefore each translation, including
the early
versions, contains an element of interpretation.1
1 J. G. Baldwin, Haggai,
Zechariah, Malachi (
1972) 240.
74 CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
Likewise A.
C. Welch said, "The text is so corrupt and the sense so
uncertain that
the verses cannot form the basis of any sure con-
clusion."2
And in utter frustration, R. C. Dentan wrote,
"In Hebrew
this is
one of the most obscure verses [v 15] in the entire Old Tes-
tament. Almost every word raises a
question."3
The other part of the difficulty is
in knowing what position the
OT has
previously taken on the issue of marriage and divorce. Many
have
assumed, as
her,
that Malachi advocated a new or different opinion on marriage
and
divorce from that which had already been espoused by earlier
OT texts. Such
an assumption, however, remains just that--an assump-
tion which must be demonstrated by the actual
texts themselves.
II. Mal 2:10-16: Its
Structure and Argument
The literary form continues the
prophetic dispute4 which the
prophet
Malachi has been using thus far in this book. Up to this point
the
disputants have been the priests and God. Now, however, the
scope is
enlarged to embrace all the people. Since the spiritual level
of the
leadership was low, it could not be expected that the spiritual
attainment of
the people would be any higher.
The pericope
opens with a double question which amounts to a
double
premise (much as the proverbial nature of the two-fold asser-
tion in 1:6 functions): 1) all
created that
nation; therefore, they should be one happy family.
However, the
sad truth was that they were dealing treacherously with
each
other by profaning the covenant that God had made with the
fathers (v
10).
Before the people could dispute this
charge, another was leveled
in vv
11-12.
worshiped
pagan gods. This action flew right in the face of warnings
against
religiously mixed marriages, such as Exod 34:12-16,
Num
25:1-3, Deut 7:3-4, and 1 Kgs 11:1-13.
And the accusations continue:
"And this again you do" (v 13).
You cause
the Lord's altar to be flooded with tears and mourning
2 A. C.
Welch, Post-Exilic Judaism (London: Blackwood, 1935) 120.
3 R. C. Dentan, "Malachi," IB 6.1136, as quoted by
R. L. Smith, Micah-Malachi
(Waco: Word, 1984) 321.
4 See E. Pfeiffer,
"Die disputationsworte im
Buche Maleachi," EVT
19 (1959)
546-58; J.
A. Fisher, "Notes on the Literary Form and Message of Malachi," CBQ
34
(1972)
315-20; G. Wallis, "Wesen und Struktar der Botschaft
Maleachis," Dax
Ferne
und nahe Wort: Festschrift Leonard Tost (ed.
F. Maass;
229-37; and
W. C. Kaiser, Jr., Malachi: God's Unchanging Love (
1984) 17-19.
Kaiser: DIVORCE IN
MALACHI 2:10-16 75
because the
Lord refuses to accept your sacrifices (v 13). And if you
ask
"why?" Why does God not pay attention to our offerings any
longer? The
answer is, because of the broken marriage vows to
which God
was a party since marriage is a covenant to which He is a
witness.
Plainly stated, the result is this: "I hate divorce, says the
Lord"
(v 16).
Two key words dominate this pericope: The word "one" (dHx)
which
occurs four times (
faithless,"
"deceitful" or “treacherous" (dgb), which appears five times
in this
brief passage (
The identity of the "One"
in v 10 is not "Abraham your father"
(Isa 51:2) as Jerome and Calvin thought or Malachi's
frequently
mentioned
patriarch Jacob (Mal 1:2;
tribe
nation descended. Instead, as in Mal 1:6 where this long indict-
ment began, God is the "One" who
"created"
"Thus
says the Lord, that created you, O Jacob"). The
implication is
that
people who have the same creator should be one family. But no,
they were
dealing treacherously with each other.
Just as pivotal is the decision on
the identity of the "one" in v 15.
Once again
it is incorrect to refer the "one" to Abraham5 and
make it
the
subject of this sentence in this manner: "Did not one [viz.,
Abraham] do
so?" [i.e., take a pagan Egyptian named Hagar to
wife?].
In this case, the prophet would be viewed as conceding the
point and
replying, "Yes, he did."
But Abraham is never called
"the one" nor could his conduct in
"putting away" Hagar be considered to be the issue here
in Malachi
since the
wives in the Malachi text who were divorced were covenant
wives and
not pagan wives. Indeed, Hagar had been brought into the
picture in
Genesis because of Sarah's wishes, not in disregard for the
wishes of
the wife of his youth as here in Malachi.
The subject of v 15, then, must be
God and "the one" would be
the
object of the sentence, not its subject. As such, "the one" would
parallel the
"one flesh" of Gen 2:24, for what could be more natural in
a
disputation on covenant-breaking divorces than for the prophet to
return to
the originating passage where the biblical norm for marriage
had been
set forth? It would be as conclusive an argument as our
Lord would
later make when confronted by the same topic of divorce,
"Have you
not read, that he who made them from the beginning
made them
male and female, and said, 'For this reason a man shall
5 C. F. Keil, The Twelve Minor Prophets (2 vols.; reprinted, Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1949) 2.453. See also S. R. Driver, The Minor Prophets
(
University Press, American Branch, Henry Frowde,
1906) 316.
76 CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
leave his
father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two
shall
become one flesh?' So they are no longer two but one flesh"
(Matt
19:4-6; cf. Mark 10:7-8).
Even though there is no explicit
indication in the first clause of
v 15
that it is an interrogative or that by "he," the prophet means
God, both
possibilities are accepted here as being consistent with the
context and
Hebrew grammar and syntax. The resulting thought
would be
this: why did God make Adam and Eve only one [flesh]
when he
might have given Adam many wives, for God certainly had
more than
enough residue of the Spirit in his creative power to
furnish
multiple partners? So why only one? Because! God was
seek-
ing a godly offspring, but multiple partners
would not have been
conducive to
this result.6
The other key word is dgaBA, "to act treacherously, to be
faithless,
deceitful."
This verb possibly is derived from the noun db,B,,
"garment."
C. Isbell
says this:
As a verb, it originally meant the taking of a beged,
"garment," but it
soon came to describe other acts that were improper within the setting
of a community composed of equal partners in covenant with God.
Cheating, swindling the gullible, defrauding poor or helpless
members
of society, etc.--all were called begeding
or "garmenting."7
Perhaps an even more contemporary expression for "dealing
treacherously" would be tantamount to being involved in a "cover-
up"
job: a masking of the covenant that God had made with his
people.8
The two examples of faithlessness in this passage are: 1)
"marry-
ing the daughter of a foreign god" (v
11) and 2) "breaking faith
with. . .
your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant" (v 14).
Both were
violations of God's holy law and therefore both acts
profaned the
holiness of God and reduced the holy people to a
common and
profane level.
Just as those who acknowledge and serve the living God are
called his
"sons and daughters" (Deut 32:19), so those who worshiped
and
served false gods were, on the same grounds, daughters of that
god.9 It is doubtful that the phrase "marrying the daughter of a
foreign
god" merely meant worshiping an idol, indeed a female idol
6 For
further discussion on this analysis of the text, see Kaiser, Malachi,
69-74.
7 C. Isbell, Malachi (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1980) 50.
8
Kaiser, Malachi, 67.
9 T.
T. Perowne, Malachi (Cambridge: University
Press, 1890) 25, citing Pocock.
Kaiser: DIVORCE IN MALACHI 2:10-16 77
such as
the goddess Asherah. C. C. Torrey,10
while having acknowl-
edged that
all interpreters from Jerome to the present have seen two
evils
rebuked in these verses: 1) marrying heathen women and 2)
divorce,
nevertheless, argued that the passage rebuked Israelites for
being
wedded to a strange cult. Such a "marrying" was an encroach-
ment on their covenantal position before God.
But such a view
presses the
figurative meaning of the text without any textual warrants.
Another more recent reaction to the traditional or literal view
that this
passage refers to mixed marriages and divorce is the cul-
tic
interpretation exemplified in A. Isaaksson.11 Isaaksson
lists five
arguments:
1. The meaning of Hlw xnW is
unclear because no subject is given
for xnW and no object is mentioned for Hlw.
2. The OT concept of tyrb "covenant" is incompatible with
the
idea
of marriage in the OT.
3. "Covered the altar of Yahweh with tears" must allude
to ritual
mourning.
4. Neither the LXX nor the Tg
take v 16 as a prohibition against
divorce;
instead, they grant permission to divorce one's wife
in
this passage.
5. The interpretation which views this portion as an attack on
apostasy
to an alien cult fully agrees with the rest of the book
of
Malachi.
Each of
these five arguments has been successfully refuted.12
1. The speaker of the words hlw xnW
clearly is Yahweh--rmx
hvhy. xnW is to be regarded as a participle,13
the pronominal subject
being
omitted, as often happens in Hebrew.14 The reading "I hate
divorce"
is to be preferred even though the Hebrew words have an
element of
uncertainty about them. As L. Kruse-Blinkenberg
affirmed,
"In my opinion, the meaning of ii. 16 is that
Yahweh hates divorce."15
10 C.
C. Torrey, "The Prophecy of Malachi," JBL
17 (1898) 4-5, and Welch, Post-
Exilic
Judaism, 120 also
supported the figurative meaning.
11 A. Isaaksson, Marriage and Ministry in the New
cited in
Smith, Micah-Malachi, 323. See also G. W. Ahlstrom,
Joel and the
of
12 I am
indebted to Smith, Micah-Malachi, 323 for his fine discussion of these
arguments.
13 J.
M. P. Smith, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of
Malachi (ICC; Edinburgh: T & Clark, 1912) 60
disagrees: "It seems better to follow
Du. Pro
[Duhm, Die zwolf Propheten (1910)] in keeping xneWA as a pf. and reading Hl.awa
in asyndetic construction with it."
14 GKC
§1165, adds, however, "But these passages are all more or less doubtful."
15 L.
Kruse- Blinkenberg, "The Book of Malachi
according to Codex Syro-
Hexaplaris Ambrosianus,"
ST 20 (1966) 103-4.
78 CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
2. The concept of "covenant," tyrb, is used in the OT for mar-
riage as witnessed by Gen 31:50, Prov 2:17, Ezek 16:8,16 and Hosea
1-2.
3. The only positive reference to cultic tears in the OT is found
in Ezek
8:14 where women are weeping for the goddess Tammaz.
The tears of
Mal
poured
forth as a mist that figuratively clouded the altar from the
view of God
as the Tg and Jerome infer or (more preferably) the
tears of
guilty worshipers whose offerings God no longer paid atten-
tion to or accepted.
4. The Tg, LXX,
Vg, Luther's translation and the Peshitta of
have all
been corrected from the MT to bring it into line with what
these
translators believed Deuteronomy was saying.17 These translators
avoid the
ordinary sense of yk,
"for, because," and instead translate it
"if": "if he hate her, let him put her away."
This translation also
rejects the Piel infinitive construct, as we find it in the MT, and
substitutes a Qal perfect verb which also has no pronominal suffixes
with it.
5. It is true that much of the book of Malachi attacks the pagan
cult, but
not everything in the book need be interpreted from this
single
point of view. The literal view of marriage is the one found
most
frequently in the commentaries and articles on this passage.18
We conclude
that Mal
marrying
heathen women and divorce.
III. Mal 2:10-16: Its Theology of
Marriage and Divorce
How, then, may we apply the teaching of this pericope
to the
Church's
current dilemmas concerning the topics of marriage and
divorce? In
fact, these two topics must always come as a unit. As
J. R. W.
Stott affirmed, "The biblical teaching on divorce must never
be
studied in isolation, but always against the background of the
biblical
understanding of marriage."19
The biblical teaching on marriage is given its earliest OT defini-
tion in Gen 2:24. It consists of a
"leaving" one's parents and a
"cleaving" to one's partner of the opposite sex. The
"leaving" and the
"cleaving" go together in that order. Therefore,
marriage is an act,
16 Cf. M. Woudstra, "The Everlasting
Covenant in Ezekiel
Theological Joumal 6 (1971) 25.
17 Kruse-Blinkenberg, "Malachi," 103-4.
18 Isaaksson, Marriage and Ministry,
30.
19 J. R. W. Stott, "The Biblical Teaching on Divorce," Churchman
85 (1971) 165.
Kaiser: DIVORCE IN MALACHI 2:10-16 79
which is
publicly recognized ("leaving"), to establish a permanent
relationship ("cleaving") and is sexually consummated
("becoming
one
flesh").20 Marriage is in principle such a lifelong union that
any
breach of
the marriage covenant may be labeled an act of "treachery"
which God
hates (Mal
Scripture clearly regards marriage as a "covenant of
God" (Prov
established in
marriage is far more enduring than those found in
friendship
pacts (e.g., between Jonathan and David), suzerainty
treaties
(e.g., between the great king of the Hittites and their vassal
kings), or
even business compacts. The result of the marriage treaty is
"one flesh." In the words of G. Wenham,
With our understanding of biology we can readily see that our
children
are an
extension of ourselves; they are in a vertical blood relationship
with us.
But foreign to our way of thinking is the idea that a wife's
nakedness is
her husband's nakedness and vice versa. In other words,
marriage, or
more precisely sexual intercourse, makes the man and wife
as
closely related as parents and children. In the words of Genesis
"they become one flesh."21
So fundamental and inviolable is the union created by this mar-
riage covenant that nothing less than a rupture
in sexual fidelity can
begin to
affect its durability. Only the distortion of that which origi-
nally made them "one flesh" can serve
as possible grounds for dis-
solution of
that abiding covenant. Not only is this apparent from the
"one flesh" argument, but our Lord will make this single
offense the
sole
exception which might permit a divorce (Matt
But already in the OT there are additional hints that such an
exception
exists. For example, in Ezekiel 16 God's marriage covenant
with