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Friend, covenant as never meant to be treated casually!

Matthew 5:31-32  "Furthermore it has been said, 'Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.' 32  But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery. 

Yeshua (Jesus) has already moved from anger to murder, from lust to adultery, exposing the heart beneath the act. Now He turns to divorce — not as a legal technicality, but as a covenant wound.

Moses permitted a sefer keritut (סֵפֶר כְּרִיתֻת), a “document of cutting off,” because of the hardness of human hearts. It was never given to make divorce casual. It restrained abuse and protected a woman from being discarded without standing, covering, or the right to remarry — a safeguard against cruel ambiguity in a world where men often held the power.

By Yeshua’s day, that provision had become permission. One major rabbinic school, Beit Hillel — the “House of Hillel,” followers of Rabbi Hillel’s legal tradition — interpreted Deuteronomy’s phrase ervat davar (עֶרְוַת דָּבָר), “a matter of indecency,” very broadly. In that looser reading, even something as minor as a ruined meal could be treated as grounds for divorce. The question had shifted from, “How do we honor covenant?” to, “What is the minimum paperwork required to send her away?”

Yeshua answers with Eden, not loopholes. “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning made them male and female… and the two shall become one flesh?” [Matthew 19:4–5]. One flesh is not contract language. It is covenant language — brit (בְּרִית), the binding faithfulness that stands behind God’s promises to Abraham and His covenant with Israel at Sinai. A covenant was never meant to be treated as disposable. As Yeshua said, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce… but from the beginning it was not so” [Matthew 19:8]. The certificate was never a measure of God’s approval of divorce. It measured how far human hearts had already drifted before the paper was signed.

This is why Matthew 5:32 is not a loophole. Yeshua is not offering one acceptable excuse among many unacceptable ones. He is naming a covenant-breaking reality. The word translated “sexual immorality” is porneia (πορνεία), a broad Greek term for illicit sexual conduct — sexual sin that violates the holy boundaries of covenant. Where porneia has already broken the one-flesh bond in substance, the covenant has been violated. But where it has not — where a man dismisses a faithful wife for lesser cause — he is not simply ending a marriage. He is treating as broken what he had no covenant right to break. Yeshua removes the religious cover from that injustice and places the weight back where it belongs. The Lord does not treat covenant lightly because He does not treat people lightly.

Kingdom people do not ask, “How little faithfulness can I show and still be technically right?” They ask, “How does my life reveal the faithfulness of God?”

Underneath this commandment stands a word older than the ruling: chesed (חֶסֶד) — loyal, covenant love that keeps faith precisely when faithfulness becomes costly. It is the word that pulses behind Hosea, who was told to marry an unfaithful woman and buy her back out of her own ruin, becoming a living parable of how God loved an unfaithful Israel. When His covenant people broke faith again and again, He did not merely write them off. He sent a Bridegroom. This is the heart the prophets reveal throughout Israel’s history — grieved by unfaithfulness, yet still bent toward redemption rather than abandonment.

None of this is spoken to the wounded as condemnation. Yeshua is near the brokenhearted — the betrayed, the abandoned, and those carrying the weight of a divorce they never chose. His truth is never cruel, and His mercy is never careless. The same King who guards covenant also heals those wounded by covenant-breaking.

Friend, so embrace the lesson of honoring the covenants you carry with holy fear and tender faithfulness — your marriage, your word, your yes, your no, and every sacred trust God has placed in your hands. Let love speak where neglect once tried to grow. Let humility open doors where bitterness once tried to build walls. Let faithfulness strengthen what God calls holy. Tend the covenant with care, guard it with prayer, and let your life reflect the steadfast love of the King. And where covenant has been broken over you, let Yeshua meet you with His healing hand, restoring what can be restored and redeeming what only the King can make whole.

Your family in the Lord with much agape love,

George & Baht Rivka (Baltimore, MD)

Editor's Note: Come with us this October as we lead an unforgettable tour across Israel! Walk through the land of the Bible, experience its history and prophetic significance, and see Scripture come alive. Space is limited, so be sure to sign up before the trip fills up!