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Bible Dictionaries
Divorce
People's Dictionary of the Bible
or Divorce. A dissolution of the marriage relation. The law on this subject is found in Deuteronomy 24:1-4, and the cases in which the right of a husband to divorce his wife was lost are stated in Deuteronomy 22:19; Deuteronomy 22:29. The ground of divorce is a point on which the Jewish doctors of the New Testament era differed widely; the school of Shammai seeming to limit it to a moral delinquency in the woman, whilst that of Hillel extended it to trifling causes, e.g., if the wife burnt the food she was cooking for her husband. The Pharisees wished perhaps to entangle our Saviour with these questions in their rival schools, Matthew 19:3; but by his answer to them, as well as by his previous maxim. Matthew 5:31-32, he declares that he regarded all the lesser causes than "fornication" as standing on too weak ground, and set forth adultery as the proper ground of divorce, Matthew 5:32; Matthew 19:9; Mark 10:11-12; Luke 16:18.
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Rice, Edwin Wilbur, DD. Entry for 'Divorce'. People's Dictionary of the Bible. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/rpd/d/divorce.html. 1893.
