Divorce in sacred Scripture

Abstract

It is believed that divorce was accepted and practised among God's chosen people. Abraham himself, the father of this people sent away his slave-wife Hagar and, surprisingly enough, God himself asked .Abraham to grant Sarah's wish and drive away the girl whom he had known and who had given birth to his son Ismael. However, the Sacred Scripture shows us a pattern of evolution in the revelation of marital morality. Starting from this, almost negative chapter of Genesis, God gradually modifies over a long time this behaviour which the patriarchs and the Israelites rove assimilated from, and shared with the surrounding cultures. Through Moses and the Law, this practice, which had previously been an unlimited right of the husband, was mildly sanctioned by God. Later on, through a development of a marital moral code of ethics in the Wisdom literature and in the prophets, God prepared the may for a complete revelation of God's own idea of marriage, "as it was created in the beginning" and as it was presented by Christ in the Gospel. The 'history' of the evolution of this morality is interesting for many reasons. Personally, I think that it gives an insight into the knowledge and love of God as the father and teacher of man. God takes the task to educate man by a gradual process which lasts for ages [...].