The most surreal day of my life, I felt nothing, and everything, but most especially disbelief, and anger.

This was not happening. But it was. I was choosing what I had not chosen.

“I hate this. I hate it,” I remember saying again and again.

My attorney misunderstood my pain. “A lot of my clients get back together with their ex,” she said, trying to console.

At first, she had believed the truth, had seen the evidence of it. But there at the end, he had bamboozled her too. As he had so many others, as he had me, for so very many years.

Now, I’m seeking the strength, and the words, to tell what defies explanation.

As much as I hated the divorcing, I did not regret having done it. For the Lord was there, in the big middle of the pain.

He was present. And not in an “I love you anyway” way. On a day that might have overwhelmed me with shame, I began to understand what our Lord feels when he does what he hates.

I want to know the truth

Two Bible verses kept whirling in my head. One verse, I’d heard referenced all my life.

For the Lord, the God of Israel, says that He hates divorce … Therefore take heed to your spirit, that you do not deal treacherously. (Mal. 2:16 MEV)

The other verse, I’ve never heard anyone teach.

The Lord said to me … I sent unfaithful Israel away with divorce papers because of all her acts of unfaithfulness. (Jer. 3:6, 8 CEB)

I had been taught: “God hates divorce. That means, never, ever, even consider it an option.” Many of the Christians around me had been taught that too.

Five years earlier, I had pulled away from my marriage for a month, but not because I was considering leaving. Desperately, I needed to try to breathe, to cry, to see, even a little bit, through the thick, bleak fog.

Just as desperately, I needed God’s guidance. And that time too, he met me. He led me to take time out from what I had not yet recognized as abuse.

The few friends I confided in believed the problem was mine; and the solution, simple: “Submit to your husband.” One of them accused me of being unteachable, when I told her the Lord was showing me submission in a different light.

After five more years of pain, prayers, seeking, I finally realized I did need to consider divorce.

I knew what that could mean, for my children and my relationships with them, for my other relationships, my livelihood, my life. But also by then, I knew how staying in the marriage was destroying everything I so desperately wanted to save.

I went to the Lord with Malachi 2 open before me. I asked the Spirit of God to teach me, to open the Word to me. I told him, “I want to know the truth.”

When God sees betrayal

Malachi 2:16 is the final verse of a seven-verse passage in which God rebukes husbands who have forsaken their wives. Five times in the space of those seven verses, God confronts and condemns one behavior.

It’s not divorcing. It’s dealing treacherously.

To act treacherously is to betray someone who trusts you, while wearing a mask of innocence. It’s done very deliberately. It’s done very deceptively. It can be done a myriad of ways. And thus, treachery can be incredibly hard to spot.

Indeed, some may read the description of the husbands’ behaviors in Malachi 2, and think treacherous too strong a word.

But God who knows the heart cannot be fooled. When he sees treachery – in marriages, in families, in other relationships built on trust – he recognizes it. He despises and forbids it. And he sees and defends the betrayed.¹

I pondered all that, and wondered why I had never heard anyone preach about any of it.

Word search puzzle

Then I looked up a Hebrew word mentioned once in that passage, the word translated “divorce” in Malachi 2:16.

A sending away. The word is shalach, and it occurs a lot in the Old Testament. Most often, it simply means “to send.” In the intensive, it means “to send away.”

Only 10 times in Scripture is shalach is used of divorce.

A cutting off. Six of those 10 times, shalach occurs alongside another Hebrew word, kerithuth, noun form of the verb karath. Kerithuth means “a cutting off.”

I found and read all 10 verses.² That’s when I realized:

Two of the 10 verses speak of God divorcing.

This is what the Lord says [to his people]: “Where is your mother’s certificate of divorce with which I sent her away? (Isa. 50:1)

[The Lord says of his people:] I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries. (Jer. 3:8)

In both verses, the two Hebrew words mentioned above reflect two aspects of divorcing:

• the word kerithuth, translated “divorce”;

• the word shalach, translated “sent away.”

So what are we reading here? Has God ever sent away those with whom he has made covenant?

But … doesn’t he hate “sending away”?

And what about Malachi 2:12? For there, four verses before God (and Malachi) speak negatively of shalach, we find Malachi encouraging God to take the other “divorcing” action of karath. That is, in the middle of confronting the men who have dealt treacherously with their wives, the prophet cries:

May the Lord cut off from the tents of Jacob the man who does this, being awake and aware, yet who brings an offering to the Lord of hosts! (NKJV)

So in these passages, did the Lord contradict himself? Did he say one thing and do another? Did God deal treacherously? What is going on?

When God divorced

Nothing in him wanted to do it. The book of Jeremiah is his lamentation and his explanation, when he did.

Long before, he had committed himself to a people, and they to him.

From the start, he had been faithful to them.

From the start, they had been fickle, at best. Through the generations, they were on again, off again, so many times we can lose count.

By “off again,” I mean: They kept breaking their promises to him – first and foremost, the promise to be faithful to him, and to love him with all their heart, soul, strength.

The place in their lives that they’d dedicated to him alone, they kept giving away to others. So many others – but primarily, Self. When a person or a people spend their lives focusing on self – on doing what they want, getting what they want – there’s no end to the different forms “other lovers” can take.

For a while, they cycled, like this: They would pursue their lovers of choice. Then they would become disenchanted or, more often, get burned – and run back to him. Time after time, he took them back. Eventually, they would find new lovers to pursue. Etc.

Things got more complicated when the people who had committed to be his people divided into two groups.

The one group who separated from the other group (in protest over genuine mistreatment by human leaders) left him at the same time.

The group that remained with him did not become more faithful. Rather, they became more covert about their decidedly unfaithful actions, and in secret their betrayals increased. In time, that group utterly abandoned him too – though they still kept up the appearance that they had not.

“I remember the devotion of your youth,” he said, to them all, “how as a bride you loved me” (Jer. 2:2).

“They broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” he lamented (Jer. 31:32). “They have forsaken me,” he cried again and again. They had betrayed him in so many ways. He confronted them about all of it.

“Surely, as a woman treacherously departs from her lover, so you have dealt treacherously with Me,” he said (Jer. 3:20).

And still, he assured them, “I have loved you with an everlasting love. I have drawn you with unfailing kindness” (Jer. 31:3).

And still, he called them to return to him. “I am your husband,” he cried (Jer. 3:14).

They responded different ways at different times.

• Sometimes, they insisted, as one, “I’m innocent. I have done nothing wrong.” (Jer. 2:35 CJB)
• Sometimes, they tried to cozy up to him and play the “How can you be angry with me?” card.
• Sometimes, they falsely accused him of treating them the way they had treated him.
• Once or twice, they apologized for treating him so badly – and in the same breath asked him why he was being so cold toward them. Afterward, they did nothing to change.
• Again and again, they refused to listen, to take responsibility for their betrayals, to feel any real remorse, to return to him in truth with their whole heart.

Through all of that, he continued to cry, “Come back!” But at some point, he knew, they had made their choice.

Not everyone individually, but his people collectively, would continue to abandon and betray him; some, blatantly; some, under cover of pretended faithfulness.

They knew he didn’t like it. But what could he do? He is faithful. They thought that meant he would stick around and put up with whatever they did to him, even when he explicitly warned them he would not.

Faithfully, he had stayed.

And when he knew it had to be done, faithfully he refused to enable what they were set on doing – to him, to each other, to themselves. He said what he hated saying, and did what he hated doing.

Deeply grieved, he told Jeremiah:

Unfaithful Israel committed adultery, so I sent her away. I gave her a certificate of divorce, yet I saw that in spite of this, her treacherous sister Judah had no fear. She also went and acted like a prostitute. (Jer. 3:8 EHV)

Ultimately, he would send away Judah too. Grieved, he asked Jeremiah:

What right has My beloved [to be] in My house when she has done many vile things and acted treacherously [over and over again]? (Jer. 11:15 AMP)

Facing what is

In Malachi 2, God confronts Jewish men who have dealt treacherously with their wives.

In Jeremiah 3, God confronts his people who have dealt treacherously with him.

In both passages, the Lord exposes specific, purposeful, ongoing acts of abandonment and betrayal. He expresses deep grief and intense anger over such behavior.

In Malachi 2, the men doing the betraying also did the divorcing. Their heartless sending away of their first wives was itself a betrayal. Women in their culture could not initiate divorce. And women forsaken by death or divorce had little recourse to protect and provide for themselves and their children.³

In Jeremiah 3, the one doing the divorcing did not betray or abandon the other. Rather, the forsaken one sent away the one who had done the forsaking. 

In Jeremiah 3, the divorce did not break the covenant relationship. Rather, it acknowledged the breaking – of trust, of vows, of relationship – that had already taken place.

The God who made us in his image knows better than anyone: Relationships based on trust, including and especially covenant relationships, can only work when both parties choose faithfulness. Not unquestioning loyalty. Faithfulness.

When one spouse is hellbent on acting in ways that harm the other and destroy the bond between the two, the other cannot fix it. That’s true even when the other “spouse” is God. For he has decided in himself never to force anyone to love him or to be faithful to him.

The book of Jeremiah testifies to the anguish and anger of a betrayed spouse, who did not ever want it to be this way, but now is facing what is.

The book of Jeremiah testifies to the devastation abandonment can wreak – yet it does not blame the faithful spouse who initiated the divorce. In Jeremiah, as in Malachi, responsibility for the abandoning lies squarely with the ones who acted treacherously and refused to turn back.

The book of Jeremiah testifies that the only way forward toward renewal and life may be for the betrayed spouse to step decisively back and away from the one determined to deceive and destroy.

Once, in Malachi, God may have said that he hates divorce.⁴

Repeatedly, in Jeremiah, God reveals how much he hates divorcing. Repeatedly, he laments the nonstop betrayals that did, and could, bring him to do it.

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This post is the second of a two-part series on Malachi 2:16.

Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay

Abuse in marriage

• Treachery and divorce: When God sees betrayal – companion post on Malachi 2:16
• Illusionists! The abusers we have not seen
• Defender of the forsaken
• The blessing of rest

See also

• I will change your name
  Submission and Sabbath – why neither looks as we may have thought
• Bucking the system: Shunning, submission and Jesus
• Can we talk about shame?
• The most freeing thing

Footnotes

1. What I’ve said briefly under this heading, I explore at length in the first post in this two-part series, Treachery and divorce: When God sees betrayal. ↩︎
2. The verses are Deuteronomy 21:14; 22:19, 29; 24:1, 3, 4; Isaiah 50:1; Jeremiah 3:1, 8; Malachi 2:16. Note: Even when shalach is speaking of divorce, it may be translated “send away” or “send out” or even “let go.” This is true especially when the other Hebrew word used of divorce, kerithuth, occurs in the same context. ↩︎
3. Times have changed, but much has not. The treacherous still know how to manipulate legal, social and religious systems to further betray a spouse they want to leave or who is seeking to leave them. ↩︎
4. As Marg Mowczko has documented: It’s unclear in the Hebrew whether Malachi 2:16 actually says God hates divorce. ↩︎