God Doesn't Hate Divorce — You Were Taught a Mistranslation

Untangled, Week 4: How one mistranslated verse became a weapon — and what Scripture really says about leaving an abusive marriage.

Content Warning: This essay discusses religious spiritual abuse, domestic control, coercion, marriage contracts, and divorce. Please take care of yourself as you read.

It was hammered into my soul almost more than any other church concept:

“God hates divorce.”

We were quoted Malachi 2:16 like a divine gavel, followed by Jesus’ words in Matthew 19: “What God has joined together, let no one separate.” The takeaway was clear, rigid, and absolute: no matter how toxic, abusive, or soul-crushing a marriage became, staying was holy and leaving was a sin. If a woman left, she was breaking a sacred covenant and inviting divine judgment.

Marriage was to make you holy, not happy.

Service to your husband was on par with service to God.

I could feel it in my church. Divorced women were seen as suspect. If they divorced, they were considered bitter, not-really-a-Christian, and unforgiving.

What no one explained was the legal and social reality of First-Century Judea. When we read Jesus’ words through modern eyes, we miss the radical, woman-protecting heart of His message. Jesus wasn’t trapping women in abusive marriages—He was shutting down a predatory legal loophole that left ancient women destitute.

The Ancient Contract: The Get and Financial Abandonment

To understand Jesus’ words in Matthew 19, we have to look back at Deuteronomy 24:1–4.

In ancient Near Eastern civil law, marriage was an economic contract controlled entirely by men. In ancient Jewish law, the legal right to issue a certificate of divorce (get) was held exclusively by men—a wife could not legally divorce her husband on her own authority. This meant an abused, neglected, or abandoned woman was completely at the mercy of her husband’s willingness to grant her freedom.

Deuteronomy 24 permitted a man to write a bill of divorce (get) if he found “some indecency” (ervat davar) in his wife.

Why was this certificate so important? In a society where women generally could not independently own property, work in the public economy, or inherit land, a divorced woman without a formal bill of divorce was trapped in legal limbo. Without a get, she could not legally remarry—which cut her off from economic support, food, and shelter, leaving her at real risk of destitution.

Scholars widely understand this certificate to have functioned as an early form of protection: it gave the woman documented legal standing to remarry and to claim the financial settlement (ketubah) she was owed.

Photo by Eric Ward on Unsplash

The First-Century Debate: Hillel vs. Shammai

By the time of Jesus, two major Pharisaic schools of thought were fiercely debating the meaning of Deuteronomy 24’s phrase “some indecency” (recorded in the Mishnah, Gittin 9:10):

• The School of Shammai (Conservative): Interpreted “indecency” strictly as serious marital unfaithfulness or sexual immorality (porneia).

• The School of Hillel (Popular/Dominant): Interpreted “indecency” as essentially anything that displeased the husband. The Mishnah gives the striking example that a man could divorce his wife even if she merely burned or spoiled his dinner—and Rabbi Akiva added that a man could do so if he simply found a more attractive woman.

Under the Hillelite view, a husband could unilaterally cast his wife out—and doing so without honoring her financial settlement upended her life on a whim while claiming he was being “biblical.”

When the Pharisees came to test Jesus in Matthew 19, asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”, they were invoking this exact debate—the Hillelite “for any matter” formula—and asking Jesus to take a side.

Jesus’ Radical Intervention: Defense of the Vulnerable

Jesus’ response was a direct challenge to male entitlement and hard-hearted exploitation:

“Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning... I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.” (Matthew 19:8–9)

Notice what Jesus is doing here:

1. He Names the Root Cause: Jesus refuses to blame God or the creation order for divorce. He places the responsibility on human hardness of heart (sklerokardia)—the systemic abuse of power by husbands over wives.

2. He Narrows the “Any Cause” Loophole: By rejecting divorce “for any and every reason,” Jesus pushed back against a man’s ability to discard a woman like used property.

3. He Redefines Adultery: In much of Roman and Jewish law, a husband was not understood to commit adultery against his own wife—adultery was framed as an offense against another man’s property. Mark’s parallel account makes the reframing especially clear: a man who divorces his wife to marry another “commits adultery against her”(Mark 10:11). Jesus gives the wife moral standing and dignity she had not been granted under civil law.

Read this way, Jesus was not creating a legal trap to force women to endure abuse. He was building a firewall around vulnerable women against predatory abandonment.

One honest complication worth naming: Matthew’s version includes an exception—”except for sexual immorality” (porneia)—that does not appear in Mark or Luke. Scholars debate at length what this clause means and why only Matthew includes it. I raise it not to resolve it here, but because an honest reading of Jesus on divorce has to reckon with it rather than pretend it isn’t there.

Paul and the Covenant of Care: Exodus 21

This protective view of divorce becomes clearer still when we look at how Paul handled marriage in 1 Corinthians 7.

Paul stands in a tradition shaped by Old Testament covenant law, including Exodus 21:10–11, which named three basic marital obligations: food, clothing, and marital rights (care/affection). In later rabbinic application, this principle was extended to all wives: if a husband withheld food, clothing, or conjugal care, he was understood to have broken the covenant—and the wife had grounds to seek release, typically by petitioning a court to compel him to grant the divorce.

In 1 Corinthians 7:15, Paul applies a related principle when an unbelieving spouse chooses to leave: “the remaining spouse is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace.” Many interpreters extend the underlying principle further: that a spouse who destroys the relationship through abandonment or abuse has already broken the covenant, whatever the paperwork says.

On this understanding, spiritual, physical, or emotional abuse destroys the covenant long before any document is signed. The divorce decree doesn’t break the marriage—the abuse and hard-heartedness broke it. The divorce is simply the legal recognition of a death that already occurred.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Beyond Bruises: Recognizing Covert Abuse

When we hear the word “abuse,” our minds often go straight to physical violence—the bruises, the broken bones, the visible marks. But abuse comes in many forms, and the invisible scars are often just as destructive to the human soul.

Biblical covenant care (Exodus 21) was never restricted to physical safety alone; it protected against neglect, starvation, and the withholding of basic human dignity. Today, we recognize that covert abuse—the kind that leaves no physical marks—is just as destructive to a marriage covenant:

• Emotional & Psychological Abuse: Chronic gaslighting, belittling, silent treatments, unpredictable rage, and flipping every issue so that you are always forced to apologize for their behavior.

• Coercive Control & Isolation: Restricting your access to friends, family, finances, or independence; monitoring your movements; and demanding total oversight of your decisions.

• Spiritual Abuse: Weaponizing scripture, headship, or “submissiveness” to justify control, silence your intuition, and make you feel like standing up for yourself is a sin against God.

• Financial Neglect & Control: Withholding access to family funds, controlling every penny, or sabotaging your ability to work or gain financial independence.

If your marriage requires you to erase your sanity, surrender your agency, or live in constant hypervigilance, that is not a holy union. You do not need a physical bruise to justify setting a boundary or stepping through a sacred exit.

Institutional church culture often forces survivors into a secondary trap: permitting “separation” for extreme cases, but demanding lifelong celibacy and an indefinite mandate to reconcile. But where there is no genuine repentance, accountability, or transformation, demanding that a survivor remain perpetually tethered to a destructive partner is not grace—it is ongoing captivity.

Divorce as a Sacred Act of Survival

Purity culture and institutional religion too often turned Jesus’ protective words into a weapon—using them to lock survivors in rooms with their abusers and telling them that “God hates divorce.”

And here is a striking detail: many modern Hebrew scholars point out that Malachi 2:16 is very difficult to translate, and a number of major translations now render it closer to: “’The man who hates and divorces his wife,’ says the Lord... ‘covers his garment with violence.’” On this reading, God isn’t condemning the victim who leaves; God is condemning the violent man who uses divorce as a weapon.

If you have walked through divorce—or if you are standing on the edge of needing to leave a toxic, coercive, or abusive relationship—hear this clearly:

Divorce is not a failure of faith.

Divorce is not a scarlet letter.

Divorce can be a holy, courageous act of boundary-setting, self-defense, and survival.

I believe God cares far more about human life, safety, and image-bearing dignity than about preserving the legal shell of an abusive institution.

Stopping the Cycle: Why Leaving Can Be a Holy Act

We often hear Jesus’ warning about not causing others to stumble (Matthew 18:6). But in an abusive or coercive marriage, remaining passive and enduring ongoing mistreatment can unintentionally enable the abuser to continue without consequence. By setting a firm boundary and stepping away—when it is safe to do so—you refuse to participate in that cycle of destruction. In this light, leaving is not a failure of covenant; it can be a courageous act that puts a decisive stop to active harm.

Reclaiming Your Sacred Exit

If you were taught that endurance in an unsafe marriage was holiness, you have permission to put that lie down today.

You were not made to be sacrificed on the altar of marital performance. You are an image-bearer of the Divine, worthy of safety, peace, and mutual love.

When you walk away from destruction and step toward life, you are not violating the Kingdom of God—you may be stepping directly into it.

A Note on Personal Safety: If you are currently in an abusive, controlling, or unpredictable relationship, please know that the decision to leave or set firm boundaries is statistically the most dangerous time for a survivor. Moving toward a “sacred exit” doesn’t mean acting recklessly. Please consider reaching out to trusted advocates or professional resources (like the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE or thehotline.org or text START to 88788) to create a safe, supported plan at your own pace.

The Garden Notes

📚 On the Nightstand

Need support while going through a divorce? Wondering if your marriage is toxic or coercive? Give Olivia Howell a chance to speak to your heart.

🌿 From the Shop

• 1-on-1 Support in the Weeds: My calendar has 5 slots open this week for 1-on-1 spiritual direction for anyone navigating faith shifts, religious grief, or relational transitions. 👉 Click here to book your session.

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Quote of the Week

You were not made to be sacrificed on the altar of marital performance. You are an image-bearer of the Divine, worthy of safety, peace, and mutual love.

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The Greenhouse Preview

In Friday’s Greenhouse (Paid): We’ll unpack “Spiritual Guilt and the Sacred Exit”—how religious conditioning keeps people trapped in harmful dynamics, working through 5 journal prompts for setting non-negotiable boundaries, and practicing a somatic grounding exercise for releasing religious shame.

The Closing Question

I’d love to hear from you in the comments: How were Jesus’ teachings on divorce framed in your upbringing—and what has helped you reframe divorce as an act of safety or grace?

P.S. Deconstructing heavy theology can leave our spirits needing a place to rest. Join me this Sunday on Streams for a brief video service created to help us exhale, pray, and anchor ourselves back in the unconditional mutuality of Grace.

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