Deuteronomy 24:1-4

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“When a man has taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favor in his eyes, because he has found some uncleanness in her [“some unseemly thing” or “some matter of nakedness”—in other words, perhaps she has been naked in front of another man]: then let him write her a bill of divorcement [better translated, “that he write her a bill of divorcement”], and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man’s wife. And if the latter husband hate her, and write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and sends her out of his house; or if the latter husband die, which took her to be his wife; Her former husband, which sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after that she is defiled; for that is abomination before the Lord: and you shall not cause the land to sin, which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance.”

The Pharisees were very familiar with this passage and quoted it to Christ in Matthew 19:1-30, seeking to pin Him down with a trick question about who is, and is not, eligible for divorce and remarriage.

The beginning of the passage is a kind of “what if” situation. It neither forbids nor commands divorce, and does not really give grounds for divorce. These verses simply deal with when divorce happens.

God plainly states that He hates “putting away” (Mal. 2:16). This has always been His perspective of divorce! However, by the time Moses was teaching Israel (2,500 years after Genesis 2:1-25), men were obtaining divorces without regard to God’s will. As a result, God inspired Moses to explain, in effect, “When this happens, the man can never take his wife back.”