Matthew 5:32 But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.
The only ground for divorce that Jesus gives to his followers is marital unfaithfulness. A divorce for other reasons causes the divorcing partner to be an adulterer should they remarry. Also, the person marrying the divorcee becomes an adulterer, too, once the marriage is consummated.
Jesus is confronting the liberalization of divorce that had occurred under the leadership of the Pharisees. The Pharisees’ beliefs on divorce were divided between two schools of interpretation. The school of Shammai held that the only reason for divorce is an immoral or unseemly sexual act. The opposing school of Hillel took their liberty with the definition of unseemly acts. They first dropped the restriction of “sexual” for the unseemly act to become grounds for divorce. This opened the door for divorce for any “unseemly act”. The result was that a wife's burning of the dinner meal or the physical decline of an older woman's attractiveness became legitimate and allowable grounds for divorce.
Jesus did not buy it. Jesus knew that Moses permitted or allowed divorce to occur because of the hardness of man's heart. It was a concession from God. Moses did not command divorce as the Pharisees believed. Divorce was a breaking of the blessed act of marriage which God has ordained from the beginning. The Pharisees, preoccupied with their ability to keep every article of the law, interpreted the "unseemly behavior" so widely that it gave the husband virtually any reason for divorce. They found ways to allow divorce. They made God’s restriction less restricting in order to meet their standards. They made allowances for divorce that were never intended, simply to make God’s Law easier, manageable and appealing.
