Does the Lord really hate divorce? – Another view of Malachi 2:16

By Nehemiah Gordon

 

"For the LORD, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away (shalach)" (Mal 2:16 [KJV])

This is one of the most mistranslated verses in the Tanach. In Biblical Hebrew "shalach", literally, "sending away", is the standard word for divorce (Dt 24:1). So the way it reads in KJV is that God hates divorce. Let's see how some other translations render this phrase:

"For I hate putting away, saith Jehovah, the God of Israel" (ASV)

"For I detest divorce - said the LORD, the God of Israel" (NJPS)

'"I hate divorce," says the LORD God of Israel' (NIV)

"For I hate divorce, says the LORD, the God of Israel" (RSV; NRSV)

All the major translations besides KJV have "I hate divorce" rather than "he hates divorce". If you look in Hebrew you won't find the word "I" or a verbal form which expresses "I". In fact, if you read it in Hebrew, you'll see something quite surprising:

"For he hated to divorce, says YHWH God of Israel..." (NG)

Who is this "he" that hated to divorce? Could it possibly be YHWH? One rule of Biblical Hebrew is that it does not contain "indirect speech". For example, it never has a sentence like: 'Nehemia says he is really tired.' It always has, '"I am really tired", says Nehemia.' If it said, ''Nehemia says he is really tired." it would mean that someone else is tired ("he"), not Nehemia. So if YHWH says, "he hated to divorce" (or even: "he hated divorce"), it could not be YHWH who hates divorce, but some other person being referred to as "he". When all these translations translated "I hate divorce" they were consciously and intentionally changing what it says in Hebrew, creating a new prophecy which does not appear in the book of Malachi. This can be confirmed by reading on in the verse:

"Because he hated to divorce, says YHWH God of Israel, and he covered his garment with corruption, says YHWH of hosts. So be careful for your spirits, do not betray!" (Mal 2:16 [NG])

Another thing YHWH says in this same verse is, "he covered his garment with corruption". Now how come when YHWH says, "he hated to divorce" they changed it in translation to, "I hate divorce"; but when YHWH said, "he covered his garment with corruption" they did not change it to, "I covered my garment with corruption"? Obviously because YHWH would not cover His garment over with corruption (not even metaphorically). In both statements, the "he" is not YHWH but someone else. This someone else both hated divorce and covered his garment with corruption.

So what on earth is going on here? Who is this "he"? Just read the entire context. The answer is right there! In v. 13 Malachi says that Judah has made the altar to weep so that their sacrifices are no longer acceptable. In verse 14 Judah asks what they have done and Malachi responds that YHWH is upset that Judah has "betrayed" the wife of his youth. How did he betray the wife of his youth? This is already explained in vv.10-11:

"(10) Is there not one father to all of us? Did not one God create us all? Why has a man betrayed his brother, desecrating the covenant of our fathers? (11) Judah has betrayed and done an abomination in Israel and Jerusalem, for Judah has desecrated the holy one of YHWH whom he loved and husbanded the daughter of a foreign god."

So this "he", Judah, "betrayed" the wife of his youth by marrying the daughter of a foreign god. Put differently, he married an idolatrous woman.

This is a violation of the covenant of our forefathers which forbids us to marry idolaters (Dt 7:1-4). This is the "betrayal" Malachi is speaking about. But why is this a betrayal to the Israelite wife of his youth? Isn't this just a betrayal to YHWH? Mal 2:16 explains, that because the Judahite hated to divorce "he covered his garment with corruption". In other words, rather than divorce his Israelite wife, giving her the opportunity to remarry and live a normal life, this Judahite, who hated divorce, kept her as a wife while at the same time he married a heathen woman. This is the betrayal of the Judahite man against the Israelite wife of his youth, which makes the altar weep.

So it is not that YHWH hates divorce. It simply does not say that in Mal 2:16. What YHWH hates is a husband who abandons his wife for another.

An abandoned wife is not divorced, so she cannot remarry, but at the same time her husband does not fulfill his husbandly duties to her. So she is stuck in limbo. The abandoned wife of the youth is a theme that appears elsewhere in Scripture. Isa 54:16, says:

"For like a sad and abandoned wife, has YHWH called you, and as a wife of youth having been rejected, says YHWH." (NG)

In this verse Israel is summoned by YHWH as an abandoned wife of youth who was been rejected but is now being taken back by her husband.

It is significant that Mal 2:16 ends, "do not betray!" Whatever this "betrayal" is, YHWH is forbidding us to do it. Could YHWH be forbidding divorce? YHWH wrote in His Torah that divorce is permissible (Dt 24:1-4). In fact, this same passage contain a direct prohibition that YHWH indeed hates, but it is not divorce:

"(1) When a man take a wife and husbands her, and it shall come to pass, if she not find favor in his eyes, for he has found in her a matter of nakedness, then he shall write for her a document of cutting off and place it in her hand and send her away from his house. (2) If she shall go out of his house and go and become another man's wife. (3) And the second husband hates her and writes for her a document of cutting off and places it in her hand and sends her from his house, or if the second husband who took her as a wife dies, (4) The first husband will not be able to take her to be his wife again after he has divorced her for she was defiled, for it is an abomination before YHWH. You shall not cause the land to which YHWH your God gave you as an inherited portion to sin."

We see here that not only is divorce permissible, but the divorced woman is completely free to marry a second husband. The only thing that is forbidden is for a divorced couple to remarry after the woman has been with a second man. By being with a second man, the woman is defiled for the first husband and can never remarry him. To remarry her first husband after she has slept with another man is an abomination to YHWH and brings sin upon the land.

Clearly divorce itself is not abomination and does not bring sin on the land. Only the scenario of remarriage is an abomination. In the Tanach abomination is synonymous with something hated, despised. So based on Dt 24:1-4 YHWH does not hate divorce but rather remarriage of a wife who has been with another man.

It is worth noting that the word "shalach", the biblical Hebrew word for divorce, also appears in regards to Moses wife, Tsiporah the Midanite (Ex 18:2). So Moses, the greatest prophet to ever live, divorced his wife. But he took her back because she had not been with another man after their divorce.

Just based on Dt 24:1-4 we could be certain that Malachi is not saying that YHWH hates divorce because the "betrayal" Malachi is talking about is forbidden by YHWH ("do not betray!"). Malachi could not prophesy an instruction which contradicts something in the Torah because anyone who did that would be a false prophet. In light of this it is curious why so many translations have intentionally changed what it says in Hebrew, putting words into the mouth of YHWH which He never spoke ("I hate divorce"). I suspect that this is Christian influence. Medieval Christians forbade divorce, and this no doubt influenced how they translated this verse in Malachi.

It is worth noting that the Talmudic Rabbis were divided on how to interpret Mal 2:16. Rabbi Yehudah (and later Rashi) interpreted it the way I did above, saying, "If you hate her, you must divorce her" [i.e. and not leave her as an abandoned wife]. On the other hand, Rabbi Yochanan (and later Ibn Ezra) interpreted it to mean that God hates divorce, saying, "He who divorces is hated" (Babylonian Talmud, Gitin 90b). The Rabbinical JPS translation adopts the opinion of Rabbi Yochanan.


Reprinted by permission, Copyright http://www.karaites.info/



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