I Corinthians 7

¹⁰ And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband:¹

Paul has reverence for God and his authority. He mentions directly that the command is from the Lord. God hates divorce (Malachi 2:16). It can be an act of violence of the male, or it can be an act of betrayal and departure by the wife. Divorce is a psychological-physical separation through commitment (vv. 10, 11): when the act of divorce is put in writing it becomes a public notice. Marriage is an institution of God and bond of love, related to the mystery of Christ and the church, a holy covenant between a man and woman. The Lord does not want it broken.

Sometimes, however, separation is a necessity, for example when the wives of King David became raped and defiled by Absalom, they were required to live as widows (2 Samuel 20:3) after David restored his kingdom. They no longer could be a sex partner with him because it would further defile the land and be an abomination—Dt. 24:4.

During that era, polygamy was a virtue (Ex. 21:10). The second law era expired with the birth of the New Covenant, fulfillment of the law, and monogamy became the general ethos (v. 27), especially among church officers.

Verse 10 is to those who have married. Marriage is a delicate institution. It is a commandment for a woman not to be divorced. Of course, this is concerning clean marriage, not one of fornication or adultery. That is one of the reasons rape and incest is so horrible, it destroys the once existent cleanliness of a female and the unity of marriage, the wonderful psychological and physical one flesh. However, sometimes, as mentioned above, a man has to separate (2 Samuel 20:3) from his former clean wife if something happens that she becomes defiled. That is not an act of violence as mentioned in Malachi, but rather a remedy to keep the whole family and land clean.

Fornication (Dt. 22:24) was “put away” from ancient Israel through the death penalty. Adultery the same. Early Christian countries and the USA used to have laws that penalized such immorality, even penalizing the criminal and separating the couple due to the uncleanness through legal action. The husband was even allowed to kill the wife and the adulterer together in one former case that I remember. However, many Christians do not believe in the death penalty, so the state would do well to give life sentences for such crimes of wickedness, marital bond and home-breaking, but we now live in an apostasy, and many crimes of immorality are not even regarded. Some other types of violent crimes are committed and the criminal is even released without bail. Protecting cleanliness of the land, the bond of marital love (Eph. 5:25) and community is becoming much more difficult.

In Ezra 10, the Hebrews put away the foreign wives, so posterity, racial and cultural homogeneity is also important. However, as troublesome as miscegenation in itself is, it is seemingly not enough for divorce if the father of the girl gives (v. 36) his daughter in marriage. Nevertheless, under such Babelistic circumstances we live in today, it would be wise to build homogeneous community where our sons could pick daughters from our own, Japhethic subraces. Due to miscegenation and twisting the law of Moses (Numbers 36:5-13) and destruction of Hebrew genetics, the modern Jewish people do not meet the Hebrew genetic and genealogical requirements and have no God-approved inheritance in the land due to their current DNA and matrilineal law. We must attempt to avoid making the same mistakes and provide homogeneous living environment.

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¹The Holy Bible: King James Version. (1995). (electronic ed. of the 1769 edition of the 1611 Authorized Version., 1 Co 7:10). Bellingham WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.