Examples of divorce in the bible, God hates seeing two people that took vows in church or anywhere, in his name, divorce. However, in spite of it being very heartbreaking to him, he allows it under certain circumstances which this article will discuss.
The Bible consistently says that marriage is a lifelong commitment. Jesus described the relationship between a man and a woman in Matthew 19:6 as the two being one flesh and that no man has the mandate to separate them after God has joined.
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Even though God hates divorce, the Bible has instances where divorce did take place and those instances are the following:
In the book of Ezra, the children of Israel, men to be precise had married foreign women at the displeasure of God. When Ezra rebuked them and urged them to make amends, putting away foreign wives was a requirement for their purification and possible return to God’s favor. This is found in the book of Ezra 10:3 which says:
“So now let us make a covenant with our God, that we leave all women, and all that are born of them according to the counsel of my Lord, and of those who tremble at the commandment of our God; and it is done according to the law.”
God was irked by the actions of these Israelites who went against God’s commands not to intermarry. However, Ezra commanded these men to confess their sins if God were to forgive them and restore them back as his chosen race and commanded to divorce their wives. Further, they were commanded to equally put away all the children they had by the foreign wives. This kind of divorce is as a result of disobedience on the part of the Israelite men which resulted in them leaving their women as widows and the children borne of them, orphans. God considered marriage union between an Israelite and an outside as “sinful”.
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Another example of Examples of divorce in the bible, intermarriage which eventually led to divorce in the Bible is found in the book of Nehemiah 13:23-24:
“At that time, I also saw Jews marrying women from Ashdod, Ammon and Moab. Half of their children spoke Ashdod or one of the other nations, but they did not know Hebrew.
After witnessing these unions mushrooming, Nehemiah, according to verse 25 of chapter 13, did this:
“I reprimanded them, cursed them, beat some of their people and pulled out their hair. I forced them to swear an oath before God and say, “Don’t marry your daughters to their sons, don’t marry their daughters to their sons.” their men or with yourself!”
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Nehemiah just as Ezra did twenty-five years prior, forcefully divorced the unions between the Jews and foreign women.
The last example of divorce in the Bible is that involving King Herod. Herod divorced his first wife in favor of Herodias who had previously been married to his brother Philip. Though there is not much information relating to the nitty-gritty of the divorce, Matthew 14:3-4 gives an insight into why John the Baptist had been arrested by Herod:
“For Herod had arrested John, chained him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, since John had been telling him, “It’s not lawful for you to have her!”
Examples of divorce in the bible, As far as John was concerned, it was unlawful for the King to divorce him as much as it was unlawful for him to marry a woman who was once his brother’s wife. Meaning, that Herod did not only divorce his wife but also caused the divorce between Philip his brother and the woman he married, Herodias. We are not told, however, that it was an amicable divorce between Philip and his wife or that King Herod just grabbed her away from him.
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Conclusion
The divorces that took place in the Bible were not pretty especially for the women who had to be divorced by force by Ezra and Nehemiah as a result of disobedience by the men from the tribe of Judah. They were left with no husbands and with children to take care of. That was not the case, however, for Herodias who divorced Philip to get married to King Herod.
