Again crowds followed Jesus, and again He taught them. Teaching was central to Jesus' ministry.
Pharisees came and tested Jesus. They were not interested in learning the truth, only in trying to trap Him in some way. This time they did this by asking Him about divorce. They maybe hoped that Jesus would come out strongly against divorce (which in fact He did) and thus incur the wrath of Herod and suffer the same fate as John the Baptist.
As He often did, Jesus responded by asking them what Moses said. Now the Pharisees prided themselves on their adherence to the Law, so Jesus is playing on this fact. The Pharisees responded by quoting from Deuteronomy 24:1-4. Now the debate at the time was such that divorce was accepted, the argument was over what constituted sufficient grounds for divorce.
Jesus pointed them back to the original purpose of marriage. Some were looking for an excuse to divorce. The emphasis should have been on how to make marriage work.
Jesus final words here may seem as though they are virtually ruling out divorce altogether.However, I do not think that this is the case. There was a practice of a man divorcing his wife for almost any reason. So if he was fed up with his wife, or just fancied another woman, he would declare that he had divorced his wife, marry the other woman, and think he was still a good Jew. Jesus is declaring that this is nonsense. In God's eyes the man was still committing adultery.
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