Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 43:170 (Apr 1886)
Article: Is Desertion A Scriptural Ground Of Divorce?
Author: Charles L. Morgan

BSac 43:170 (April 1886) p. 318

Is Desertion A Scriptural Ground Of Divorce?

Rev. Charles L. Morgan

I. History Of The Doctrine

Upon the interpretation of a single passage in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians depends our answer to this question. If, when Paul says in 1 Cor. 7:15, “The brother or the sister is not under bondage (δεδούλωται) in such cases,” he means to affirm, that when a believing wife is deserted by her consort, or vice versa, the two are no longer bound by the marriage vow, but are free to marry again, then he certainly sanctions another ground of divorce besides that which Christ, in his Sermon on the Mount and on one other occasion, seems explicitly to affirm as the only ground; viz., fornication. The right interpretation of this passage is of prime importance to the interests of morals and good government. Our inquiry may well begin with a brief historical survey.

In Christ’s time the permission of Moses (Deut. 24:1), that if a man found “uncleanness” in his wife, he might give her a writing of divorcement, and let her go, and “she may go and be another man’s wife,” was so freely interpreted by the school of Hillel, that divorce had become practically dependent upon the changing mood and taste of the husband. Although the school of Shammai held that the “uncleanness “specified by Moses must involve moral guilt, yet the view of Hillel so far prevailed, that the poor cooking of a dinner, the going from home without a veil, any bodily affliction, or even the preference of the husband for a more attractive woman, were justified by the rabbis as valid grounds of divorce.

BSac 43:170 (April 1886) p. 319

Nor, as illustrated perhaps in the woman of Samaria, was this putting away confined to the act of the husband. It was not uncommon for the Jew of Christ’s day to excuse the laxity of his people, in this respect, on the plea of the peculiar privileges of God’s chosen people.

Of the facility of divorce in the Empire there is copious evidence. To no evil do historians attribute greater responsibility for the fall of the Republic, than to the perfect freedom with which wives and husbands were shifted at will, or even exchanged. Seneca mentions “illustrious and noble women who reckoned time, not by the number of the consuls, but by the number of their successive husbands.” Into such disrepute had the married state fallen, and so emptied of its ancient dignity had the family relation become, that Augustus found it necessary, as a measure of state, to offer a bounty to those who would take wives and rear children. We gain some conception of the rema...