The objection has been raised that the prophetic author
could scarcely have attributed hatred of divorce to the Lord God, when the Lord
permits it in Deuteronomy 24:1-4. But it is not clear upon close reading that those
verses constitute any blanket approbation of divorce. As we have seen, Deuteronomy
24:1-4 formally is a prohibition of remarriage to a former spouse under certain
conditions and a tacit acknowledgement that divorce takes place. It even casts
some aspersions on remarriage by describing it as “defiling” the wife (24:4). The
author of Malachi could have taken the same hermeneutic approach that the
Essenes and Jesus would later adopt—namely, that the doctrine of matrimony
should be founded primarily on the creation narrative (the yəsôd həbbərî’āh,
or “principle of creation,” CD 4:21; cf. Matt. 19:3-9) and later laws read in
its light. For Malachi, the God of Israel is adamantly opposed to divorce, and
the act of divorce is correlated with “covering one’s garment with violence.”
The “garment” may be a metaphor for the spouse herself or the marital relationship
(cf. Ruth 3:9; Ezek. 16:8), which suffers “tearing” via the divorce. (John S.
Bergsma, The Bible and Marriage: The Two Shall Become One Flesh [A Catholic
Biblical Theology of the Sacraments; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic,
2024], 143)
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