Matthew 19:9, adultery
A reader wonders if "adultery" in Matthew 19:9 means sexual immorality or more generally, the betrayal of the marriage covenant. I think the answer’s straightforward enough and yet there are complexities attached to all far-reaching questions. The notion that sexual infidelity is the result of nothing but pure sexual urge will hardly bear examination; but it remains true that whatever drives and hungers and felt needs are involved they all lead to sexually charged behaviour. So that while adultery is sexual in nature it may arise out of or express many different things.I’m sure adultery in this passage involves sexual immorality but I’m also sure that sexual immorality is an expression of a wider concept—unfaithfulness to the marriage covenant, though I’m still sure we’re not to empty "moicheia" of its sexual content. There is a real sense in which every mistreatment of our spouses is against the marriage covenant. We commit to honour and cherish the one we’re marrying (well, all right, many of us don’t use such words any more but if a marriage covenant means anything such things are promised, expressed or not). Sustained hyper-criticism, public shaming, physical abuse and the like are flagrant betrayals of our commitment to the husband or wife. But whatever else we’d make of these or whatever else we’d call them we’d be slow to call them "adultery". We might even claim they are equivalent to adultery but we’d probably not use that term because biblically and socially, ancient and modern, it’s meaning is too well established.
The prophetic use of the term and the use of the broader term porneia (fornication) as metaphors for national unfaithfulness to God (Yahweh) stresses the fundamental nature of the act that expresses apostasy. The metaphor for national apostasy—the violation of the marriage covenant—is sexual immorality. The widespread use of this metaphor for that foundational betrayal (apostasy) gives adultery and fornication a profoundly sinister character.
It’s true that Israel told lies, complained, stole and oppressed—all this is contrary to the commitment they made when "marrying" God, but while these are mentioned in the course of describing Israel’s sinful career, the decisive act of apostasy is called "adultery" or "fornication". So let me repeat, the metaphor used to indicate apostasy was Israel "sleeping around" with other gods and nations—the image is sexual infidelity.
But sexual immorality can occur in the mind and be cherished and aimed for. This is Christ's point in Matthew 5:28 where he says that if someone (a married man, presumably since he’s responding to an Old Testament marital context and uses the word adultery) looks (present tense verb probably suggesting an ongoing and not a once-for-all act) to (preposition stressing aim or object) lust after a woman commits adultery. The man who keeps eyeing a woman lustfully wanting her, Jesus said, has already committed adultery with her.
In Matthew 5 Christ upped the stakes and made "adultery" equivalent to the lustful heart—the heart that cherishes sexual pleasure at the expense of the marriage covenant is infidelity. The man is not looking on the woman to admire her grace or charm in some Platonic sense; he wants to have sex with her at the expense of marital fidelity.
He has the same thing in mind in Matthew 19:9. The man that divorces his wife with a view to marrying another is adulterous. When he says the man commits "adultery" he is saying that his aim is lustful, that he aims to get another bed partner and does it through despising his marital covenant and by marrying the one he now wants. In this Christ has gone to the heart of the matter (something the churchgoers had ignored when they mulled over the words and setting of the Mosaic legislation). Christ has risen beyond debates about terms and their use and gone to the sick hearts that prize sexual satisfaction above and at the price of a faithful heart and devotion.
"Commits" and how it functions in a text is not determined finally by grammar (as the grammarians have made clear to us). There are too many legitimate options.
Christ’s questioners thought a person committed adultery only when he actually, physically had sex with some woman other than his wife and they thought they avoided it by divorcing. They were potecting their lust-filled and consumer hearts with a text. Christ who re-defined adultery upward in Matthew 5:28 insists here in Matthew 19:9 that the lustful man that puts his wife away to get another is adulterous. The man that does that commits adultery because he has and acts out of an adulterous heart. His point, it appears, is not on linear or punctiliar action. His point is the fact rather than the frequency of adultery.
[But we're not to forget that Jesus is dealing with the adulterous heart and not just the sex act.]
Does all this mean that adultery doesn’t involve sexual immorality since it can be committed without the act? Since it is a betrayal of the marital covenant? No, I don’t think that’s the case. The crime in view is sexual so that, in my view, adultery remains sexual but the sexual crime that Christ is working with in this context is a betrayal of the marriage covenant. They wanted cleared of adultery because they got a divorce decree and Christ convicted them of adultery because they wanted another woman and got it by a divorce decree.
In both Mathew 5 and 19 Christ is dealing with a specific issue generated by specific questions and setting. To take that as the testimony of scripture on the whole matter of divorce, marital unfaithfulness, remarriage and the like is to make an unwarranted move. There’s more to be said about these matters than is covered in these two texts.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.