Exception Clause - Divorce Your Remarriage Overview Part 4

This is the fourth episode in a series that overviews the content of my book Divorce Your Remarriage. I am Chris Iverson and in this episode I cover the exception clause as found in Matthew 5:32 and Matthew 19:9. First, the exception clause is an exception, not a setting aside of the question, not a mistranslation that should say “not even for fornication”, and not a mere description of “when” someone became an adulterer or adulteress. Second, when the condition for the exception clause is met, it permits divorce and remarriage, not just divorce. Third, it’s not for fornication during betrothal nor does it refer to incest, since those concepts are not in the passages and therefore, Jesus’ audience would have no way of knowing that’s what He intended. Fourth, in the two passages with the exception clause, the man divorces his wife. The exception clause does not envision the man gaining the moral right to divorce and remarry because he cheated on his wife. That makes no moral sense. Fifth, the exception clause is not for the wife cheating on the husband (innocent party to adultery view). While that is the most popular interpretation, it fails since it permits divorce for adultery but not for worse conduct, it allows an impossibility where the innocent party is no longer married after the divorce yet the guilty party is still married after divorce (therefore the guilty party’s remarriage is adultery), it would only let the husband divorce and remarry if the wife cheated but it wouldn’t let the wife divorce and remarry for the husband cheating since Jesus never flips the genders with the exception clause and Jesus’ audience around 30 AD would assume the genders are not to be flipped, and most of all, Matthew 19:7-8 specifically rejects divorce and remarriage for adultery.

What does the exception clause mean? The exception clause imagines a man marrying a divorced woman. Jesus clarifies this in the second moral formulation in Matthew 5:32. Their marriage is “porneia” since it is a type of adultery, i.e. an adulterous remarriage. Therefore, the exception clause permits a man or a woman to divorce and remarry if their first marriage was an adulterous remarriage due to their first spouse having been previously married. This is based on the premise that an invalid marriage, once it has been divorced/annulled, does not limit a person’s future marriage options.

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