What Does the Divorcer Cause?

The common translation of Matthew 5:32 is: “But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery” (KJV). However, the Greek word translated “to commit adultery” (moi­ cheuthenai,¹ from the verb moicheuo) is in a past tense.² A reader will easily recognize that “causeth her to have committed adultery,” or “to have been committing adultery,” is not credible; the divorcer cannot retroactively cause anything. So most translators alter the tense of the verb to a present tense, from which the reader infers the adultery will then be in the future. (But what if she does not remarry?) Nevertheless, it is possible to understand it in the tense Matthew records (using italics for translator-supplied words):

“But I say unto you, That whosoever is putting away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to be deemed to have committed adultery, and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced is deemed to commit adultery.”³

The Apostle Matthew

— Br. James B. Parkinson

(1) Early manuscripts read thusly. Most (but not all) later manuscripts, headed by L and ∆ (8th and 9th century respectively, none earlier), have changed it to moichasthai, which is present infinitive, “to commit adultery.” Thus, the fault lies not with the King James translators themselves, though the revisers have less excuse.

(2) Technically, aorist tense (“unseeable” tense): 1st Aorist, infinitive, passive, per Bagster’s (or Harper’s) The Analytical Greek Lexicon.

(3) The divorcer, and also any man waiting for her to be divorced, are guilty in Mark 10:11-12 and Luke 16:18. Curiously, the divorcee is not said to be guilty in any of these three scriptures.

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