§18 Directions to the Married (1 Cor. 7:10–11)
Once again Paul writes to the married, although now he is interested in the potential of divorce, not in the matter of sexual relations in marriage. As he begins his remarks Paul makes plain that he is not giving his own opinion; instead, he is delivering a word from the Lord to the Corinthians. Accordingly, Paul’s words are measured and weighty, coming in the forms of established pronouncements.
7:10 / The tradition to which Paul refers or which he cites may lie behind the materials in passages such as Mark 10:2–9 and Luke 16:18 or Matthew 5:32. This dominical word is a firm denial of the validity of divorce. The command from the Lord, however, is restricted to verse 10 and does not include or extend to verse 11. Commentators discuss and speculate about Paul’s source for this authoritative saying, suggesting either that he learned it from earlier followers of Jesus or that he had this teaching as a revelation from the risen Lord. In the current context, such a discussion is fruitless and distracts from the sense of gravity that Paul attaches to these words. Wherever and however Paul possessed this statement from the Lord, he took it with utter seriousness and offered it in its briefest, unqualified form: a wife must not separate from her husband.
7:11 / The series of phrases in this verse is remarkable. Because of its printed form, the NIV can be misread as if this line were continuing the command of the Lord from the previous verse. Nothing could be more wrong. A better presentation is that of the NRSV, which correctly places verse 11 in parentheses. In this verse, Paul states a real possibility—that despite the command of the Lord a believer may enact a divorce. The statement is not an exception clause from Paul, however; rather, it provides directions in the event that persons practice divorce despite the word from the Lord.
The specific way that Paul casts this discussion, focusing on the wife, commenting and reasoning on the divorce in relation to her role in the action, implies that he may be treating a specific situation that the Corinthians would recognize but about which later readers are uninformed. Normally in Greco-Roman cultures such discussions focus on the husband. Only after dealing with the wife and divorce does Paul eventually tag on the line And a husband must not divorce his wife.
Whatever we are to make of the situation that lay behind Paul’s comments, we should notice the remarkable way in which Paul deals with this situation and subject. Having clearly and plainly reiterated the command of the Lord, Paul does not turn the Lord’s word into a new law. Moreover, facing the reality of a divorce that is obviously contrary to the advice from the Lord, Paul does not denounce the divorced person. He has other advice, seemingly his own opinion, that the wife must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. Paul does not imagine or comment on the possibility that such a reconciliation is impossible. Although one may only speculate, perhaps given the reality of God’s reconciliation of the world through the mystery of the cross of Jesus Christ, Paul could not imagine that reconciliation was impossible in the context of the Christian community. Paul’s comments raise issues for twentieth-century readers that his remarks do not address or resolve.
Paul’s logic takes another direction in this verse. Indeed, his comments once more assume that in marriage both wives and husbands have rights and responsibilities and can take initiatives. Paul’s directions raise many issues, deal clearly with some, and do not give attention to others. Above all, however, we should notice that Paul takes the words of the Lord seriously, but he never lapses into a new legalism in Jesus’ name. Unfortunately, this remarkable combination of faithfulness and flexibility is often difficult to comprehend and emulate.
7:10 / Scholars sometimes suggest that extremists in Corinth were advocating the absolution of marriage or the practice of so-called spiritual marriage that was without sexual relations. The earlier portion of ch. 7 does relate to some such practices among the Corinthians, but it is not clear that the present discussion relates to that same problem.
Commentators also attempt to explain Paul’s focusing predominately on a/the wife in these lines by relating his remarks to a group of so-called eschatological women in Corinth who are thought to have been seeking divorce as a demonstration of their eschatological freedom from earthly existence. This possibility is not a certainty.
The most important angle for viewing the verse(s) is Paul’s parenthetical explanation (not I, but the Lord)—cf. v. 12, (“I, not the Lord”)—which demonstrates Paul’s knowledge of, respect for, and use of the teachings of the Lord. Reiterating the words of the Lord, Paul says, I give this command; whereas offering his own apostolic opinion, he writes, “I say this.…”
Finally, the use of “to separate” rather than “to divorce” is incidental, since in antiquity divorce most often happened through real separation rather than through legal documentation. Paul uses these two verbs interchangeably in the following lines (vv. 13, 15). For information on Greek and Roman divorce practices see A. Berger and B. Nicholas, “Marriage, Law of,” OCD, pp. 649–50.
7:11 / Commenting on these verses, Watson (First Epistle, p. 69) makes a difficult but critical observation: “No doubt, some Christians pass over their own failure to live by the teaching of Paul (and Jesus) on this subject [of divorce] by talking too readily of the failure of their marriage rather than of their own failure as married people.”