The ethics of Jesus, part three: Adultery

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Committing adultery is something clearly not seen as a wise move even in Jesus' time, but it still happened from time to time.

There is a joke about the Bible’s Moses and what happened when he introduced the Ten Commandments. His people had been slaves in Egypt for 400 years. Now, set free, they partied. They melted down their gold trinkets and molded an idol, a golden calf, representing, probably, fertility. Hedonism surfaced in a big way as they danced around it.

Moses came down from the mountain where God had met him. He said to the partyers, “I have some good news and some bad news”.

“Give us the good news first,” the people yelled.

“I got the commandments down from 15 to 10.”

“What’s the bad news?”

“Adultery is still in.”*

That command reads, You shall not commit adultery. About 1500 years later Jesus commented on it. You can find his commentary in chapter five of the account of his life called Matthew. Matthew was one of his apprentices (disciples). In this column I’m continuing with my look at the ethics of Jesus, so today: adultery, the act of “cheating” on your marriage partner.

Like Moses, Jesus was not in favour of it. Of course he regarded it as a sin to sleep with the wife or husband of another partner, but he went several steps further.

As a twenty-something Jew he observed that some people played fast and loose with their marriage vows.

Take, for example, a local ruler named Herod Antipas and a woman named Herodias. They were both married to other people. However, they became lovers and divorced their partners to marry each other. They were the talk of the town.

Ordinary Jewish people under Herod’s rule were scandalized by his blatant adultery. John the Baptist, a precursor to Jesus, gave voice to the Jewish sense of scandal. Herodias successfully demanded John’s head for his trouble.

Jesus noted, however, that it wasn’t just ruling elites who cheated on their partners. He was disturbed to find that it was also not uncommon for young Jewish husbands to violate their marriage commitments. His observation was that some would become unhappy with their wives for relatively minor reasons. These might include dissatisfaction with the woman’s family or with her cooking.

Rather than work through such a difficulty, the young man in question might approach the rabbi of his synagogue and ask for what was known as a “certificate of divorce”. If he could get the rabbi to sign off, he was free to show his unfortunate partner the document and evict her.

I say “unfortunate” because in those days women were typically (but not always), dependent on their husbands for their economic well-being and, to some degree, social standing (you can get a feel for this by checking the reaction of Joseph, the “foster father” of Jesus, when he learned that his bride-to-be was pregnant). For a man to throw his partner out of the house was to expose her to a stigmatized life and poverty. Furthermore, Jesus saw that it would sometimes happen that a man would ditch his spouse for the purpose of marrying someone else who had caught his eye.

We can see from this that Jesus’ words about adultery and divorce in Matthew five go hand in glove. Some of the language he uses is intentionally shocking, hyperbolic.

Overall, it is clear the he condemns the entire picture of young men leering at other women and following their passions to the detriment of the women who became the victims of their carelessness (here we find implications for the creation and viewing of pornography).

What then did Jesus hold as ideal for sexuality, gender, marriage and family? This is no secret. You can discover this by getting to know the people in any of the hundreds of churches within a 20 minute commute of where you live. Jesus clearly embraced the vision of relations between the sexes revealed in the opening pages of the Bible. Rigorous lifelong partnership, genuine love and commitment and the enjoyment of raising family.

For those of us who desire to take on the challenge of trying to live up to this vision, I think Jesus would say, “More power to you”, and he would say, I believe, “Journey through life with others who are committed to me and who are trying to live up to the same vision”.

*Norman Doidge in Foreword to 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson. 2018, Random House.

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