This coming Sunday is the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, lectionary cycle B. Although not included in our reading, Mark 10:1 indicates that Jesus is again on the move: “He set out from there and went into the district of Judea (and) across the Jordan. Again crowds gathered around him and, as was his custom, he again taught them.” Jesus is leaving his native Galilee and is on the road to Jerusalem. The tense of the verbs indicate that these are crowds that are habitually following Jesus. Perhaps these people were following Jesus in Galilee, have crossed the Jordan, and are moving towards Jerusalem.

Notice that this passage follows a pattern: public engagement (vv.2-9) followed by a more thorough teaching for the disciples in a private setting (vv.10-12). The larger arrangement in Mark 10 consists of three passages in which Jesus meets with individual characters (the Pharisees of v. 2; the young man of v. 17; and James and John in v. 35). Then Mark’s Jesus uses the encounters to teach the Twelve privately (v. 10, v. 23, and v. 41). This is then followed by models for Christian discipleship (the child of vv. 13–16; Jesus himself in vv. 32–34; and the blind man in vv. 46–52).

Our Sunday gospel takes the form of a story with controversy in which the Pharisees seek to bring Jesus into conflict with what they regard as the clear teaching of Holy Scripture – in this case referring to the Hebrew scriptures, known to us as the Old Testament. Their intent was clear: they were testing (peirazo) Jesus. When this word is used in Mark, it is either Satan (1:13) or the Pharisees (8:11; 10:2; 12:15) who are “testing/tempting” Jesus. Their question begins, “Is it lawful…?” However, they aren’t really asking Jesus to tell them what the law says. They already know what the law says:  “When a man, after marrying a woman and having relations with her, is later displeased with her because he finds in her something indecent, and therefore he writes out a bill of divorce and hands it to her, thus dismissing her from his house” (Deuteronomy 24:1).  There is a lot to “unpack” in that single verse and the context in which it is recalled in the gospel passage. But first, let us delve into the meaning of marriage in the 1st century context of Israel.

Malina & Rohrbaugh (Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, 240) point out that the first century understanding of marriage is quite different from ours today.

“For an understanding of divorce one must understand what marriage meant in a specific culture. Under normal circumstances in the world of Jesus, individuals really did not get married. Families did. One family offered a male, the other a female. Their wedding stood for the wedding of the larger extended families and symbolized the fusion of the honor of both families involved. It would be undertaken with a view to political and/or economic concerns — even when it might be confined to fellow ethnics, as it was in first-century Israel. Divorce, then, would entail the dissolution of these extended family ties. It represented a challenge to the family of the former wife and would likely result in family feuding.”

Given their understanding of marriage as something arranged by parents, divorce was a sin against one’s parents. The divorcing son was dishonoring his parents by undoing the marriage they had arranged. It was the parent’s promise to the wife’s parents that was being broken by the divorce.

Image credit: The Pharisees and the Sadducees Come to Tempt Jesus | James Tissot | Brooklyn Museum, PD-US