A marriage breakdown can usually be traced to a heart breakdown, so let’s build up with love instead.
Welcome to our continuing study in the fifth book by Moses, Deuteronomy. We’ve reached chapter 24, and you can’t help but realize how many details there are which God wanted His people to follow. Many of these topics have been discussed earlier in greater detail, but these chapters give some additions that the Lord felt were important. I recall my mother or father repeating some command as I ran out the door on my way to school, because there were some things I couldn’t afford to forget. So even though we may feel like we’ve heard this all before, the Lord knows what we need to have repeated and, when God is the speaker, it’s good to keep paying attention. Many centuries later, the apostle Paul wrote, “For me to write the same things to you is not tedious, but for you it is safe” (Php 3:1). Here the subject is the dissolving of a marriage through divorce, and specifically that a woman could not be married to the same man twice, when she had been married to another in between. What a strange topic this is, especially because “the Lord God of Israel says that He hates divorce” (Mal 2:16). Why was divorce allowed? Jesus explained, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so” (Mt 19:8). Hard hearts make for hard lives. In the case mentioned here, the Lord didn’t want men to treat their relationship with wives capriciously. Love and loyalty should go together. On a happier note, a newly married man was freed from military obligations the first year, to “bring happiness to his wife whom he has taken” (Deut 24:5). Now there’s a positive suggestion for all husbands, not just in the first year of marriage, but as a goal for every day!