Today we begin Deuteronomy Chapter 24.
For the Complete Jewish Bible, click here.
For the King James version, click here.
From today, we’re going to be dealing with the dicey topic of a Hebrew man handing out a writ of divorce to his wife.
In Hebrew, this is called a GET.
Now here’s the thing.
In the Torah, you’re not going to find any procedures or rules explaining how exactly divorce was to be accomplished.
You’ll find plenty of instructions about marriage and remarriage but practically nothing when it comes to divorce.
So where is one to go to find instructions concerning divorce?
Well, my friends, this is a perfect example of why you need to go to the Oral Torah.
Minus the Oral Torah, you have no way of really knowing what the proper way to divorce is…
…as established by the authorities who have been chosen by God.
I’ve shifted my perspective on this over the years and no longer accept the common Hebrew Roots notion that all Oral Torah are simply “teachings of men” as they put it.
In fact, when the Apostle Paul said that anyone who tries to live by the Torah will be placed under the curse of the Torah, one of his points was that the Torah is NOT just the written Torah of the five Books of Moses…
…but also included the Oral Torah and then went on to explain that we need to bow down to the authority of Israel because they had been entrusted with the very words of God.
The same goes for the Kosher rules of slaughtering animals.
How do we know the proper way to slaughter a clean animal in a kosher manner?
The only way to know is by going to the Oral Torah.
Now concerning divorce, you may be surprised to know that as it is today, divorce was quite customary and normal in the ancient Middle East.
This was another one of those areas where the Lord was stepping in and saying while the whole world does things one way, you as my Chosen People are going to be doing things another way.
Hence, the Lord began to set down prohibitions governing remarriage and making it clear that His divine and ideal Will was that marriage was to last for a lifetime.
Leave a Reply