What does the Bible say about divorce and remarriage?

Direct answer: the Bible addresses divorce in four blocks of text that do not say quite the same thing. The law of Deuteronomy 24 presupposes divorce and regulates the certificate the woman received. Malachi 2 carries an emphatic condemnation. In the Gospels, Jesus points back to the purpose stated at the beginning and calls Moses' permission a concession to hardness of heart — with Matthew recording an exception that Mark does not. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 7, adds the case of a non-believing spouse who leaves. What the Christian traditions build out of that combination is markedly different.

What did the law of Moses provide?

The text Jesus discusses with the Pharisees is this one:

When a man takes a wife and marries her, then it shall be, if she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some unseemly thing in her, that he shall write her a certificate of divorce, put it in her hand, and send her out of his house. (Deuteronomy 24:1)

Two observations change how Deuteronomy 24 reads:

• The law does not create divorce. It assumes an existing practice and regulates one aspect of it.
• The certificate protected the woman. A written document was what allowed her to remarry without being left in a position of legal and social vulnerability.

What did Jesus answer when he was asked about it?

The question put to him was not whether divorce existed but on what grounds it was lawful — there was an active rabbinic debate about the scope of the phrase "some unseemly thing":

Pharisees came to him, testing him and saying, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason?” He answered, “Haven’t you read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall be joined to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh’? So that they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, don’t let man tear apart.” (Matthew 19:3-6)

And on the permission in the law:

He said to them, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it has not been so. I tell you that whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and he who marries her when she is divorced commits adultery.” (Matthew 19:8-9)

The chapter is Matthew 19.

Why do Mark and Matthew not say the same thing?

Because the exception appears only in Matthew. Mark records the saying without it:

He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. If a woman herself divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery. (Mark 10:11-12)

The difference between Mark 10 and Matthew 19 is known as the Matthean exception clause, and it stands at the center of centuries of Christian debate. Readers who treat Mark as the earlier record tend to see an unqualified statement; readers who treat Matthew as clarifying tend to see a recognized case. Both readings are ancient.

One contextual detail: Mark mentions the possibility of a wife divorcing her husband, which reflects the Greco-Roman setting of his community. Under the Jewish law of the period, it was the husband who issued the divorce.

What did Paul write about separation?

Paul distinguishes carefully between what he attributes to the Lord and what he offers as his own guidance to a new situation:

But to the married I command—not I, but the Lord—that the wife not leave her husband (but if she departs, let her remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband), and that the husband not leave his wife. (1 Corinthians 7:10-11)

And then the case of a couple in which only one person is a Christian:

Yet if the unbeliever departs, let there be separation. The brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God has called us in peace. (1 Corinthians 7:15)

The chapter is 1 Corinthians 7. This verse is the basis of what Catholic tradition calls the Pauline privilege, and it is also among the most cited texts in Protestant churches when the subject is desertion.

And Malachi 2:16, which is quoted as “God hates divorce”?

Here the World English Bible is a useful illustration of a real difficulty, because it does not render the verse the familiar way:

One who hates and divorces”, says Yahweh, the God of Israel, “covers his garment with violence!” says Yahweh of Armies. “Therefore pay attention to your spirit, that you don’t be unfaithful. (Malachi 2:16)

Two things are worth saying about Malachi 2. The Hebrew of this verse is famously difficult, and translations render it in materially different ways — some as "I hate divorce", others, like this one, as a description of the man who hates and divorces. And in either rendering the phrase sits next to the image of covering one's garment with violence, in a passage denouncing men who were abandoning their wives. The target of the text is the betrayal, not the woman who leaves.

How does each tradition handle divorce and remarriage?

None of these positions is presented here as the right one. What can be said with confidence is that all of them read the same texts and reach different arrangements, and that the difference turns on the relative weight given to Matthew 19, Mark 10 and 1 Corinthians 7.

What the Bible does not do on this subject

• It does not address the modern marriage. The setting of these texts is a society in which a woman sent away had no means of support, which is why the certificate of divorce is so central.
• It does not promise restoration. No passage states that a particular prayer or a particular conduct brings a spouse back, and nothing here should be read as such a promise.
• It does not discuss domestic violence in this vocabulary. None of the texts above is about assault, and none of the Christian traditions reads indissolubility as an obligation to remain in a violent situation.

If this question has come out of a crisis rather than out of curiosity, no article can resolve it. Separation is one of the hardest events of adult life. It is worth talking to someone you trust in your own community and, on anything touching children, property or rights, to a lawyer.

If violence is involved, that is not a matter of biblical interpretation: in the United States, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available at 1-800-799-7233, and 911 is the emergency number. And if the process is affecting your sleep, your work or your health, seek professional support — this article does not replace medical or psychological care. The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline can be reached by call or text at 988, at any hour.

Bible text: World English Bible (public domain). This article describes what the text says and what different Christian traditions teach; it does not recommend one of them.