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Christian Women Deserve Honor and RespectThe Watchtower—1995 | July 15
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The prevailing rabbinic teaching allowed for divorce on such minor grounds as a wife’s spoiling a dish of food or talking to a strange man. Why, divorce was even allowed if a husband found a woman who was more attractive in his eyes! One Bible scholar notes: “When Jesus spoke as he did he was . . . striking a blow for women by seeking to restore marriage to the position it ought to have.” Indeed, marriage ought to be a permanent union in which a woman can feel secure.—Mark 10:6-9.
12. By the words “commits adultery against her,” what concept was Jesus introducing?
12 Second, by the expression “commits adultery against her,” Jesus introduced a view that was not recognized in the rabbinic courts—the concept of a husband’s committing adultery against his wife. Explains The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: “In rabbinic Judaism a woman by infidelity could commit adultery against her husband; and a man, by having sexual relations with another man’s wife, could commit adultery against him. But a man could never commit adultery against his wife, no matter what he did. Jesus, by putting the husband under the same moral obligation as the wife, raised the status and dignity of women.”
13. Concerning divorce, how did Jesus show that under the Christian system, there would be one standard for both men and women?
13 Third, by the phrase “after divorcing her husband,” Jesus recognized the right of a woman to divorce an unfaithful husband—a practice apparently known but not common under Jewish law in that day.c It was said that “a woman may be divorced with or without her will, but a man only with his will.”
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Christian Women Deserve Honor and RespectThe Watchtower—1995 | July 15
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c First-century Jewish historian Josephus reports that King Herod’s sister Salome sent her husband “a document dissolving their marriage, which was not in accordance with Jewish law. For it is (only) the man who is permitted by us to do this.”—Jewish Antiquities, XV, 259 [vii, 10].
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