Mark 10:2

‘And there came to him Pharisees and asked him, “Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife?” testing him out.'

‘Testing Him out' may not necessarily mean in a bad sense. These were not the Pharisees he had been dealing with in Galilee, even though they did want to know His calibre and position. But possibly a hint of antagonism is intended, and it may be that their intention was to see if He would dare condemn Herod who had notoriously put away his wife. By speaking out boldly on divorce in Peraea (if He was in Peraea, see above) He could be represented as an enemy of Herod, as John the Baptiser had been considered to be before Him.

There were two opposing views among the Pharisees themselves about divorce, which had been declared by two great Rabbis of the past who had taken up two different positions. Both, however, gave their interpretations based on Deuteronomy 24:1. In that passage Shammai and his followers, whose interpretations of the Law always tended to be stricter, interpreted the ‘some unseemly thing in her' of Deuteronomy 24:1 as signifying adultery or sexual impropriety. Hillel and his followers on the other hand taught that it should be interpreted more widely and could mean anything that her husband found unsatisfactory in her such as letting the food burn or losing her beauty. Thus both allowed divorce, but while Shammai did so only on a limited basis, Hillel was more free and easy and allowed divorce for almost any cause, and only too many had taken advantage of the fact. As Josephus could say quite glibly, ‘At this time I divorced my wife, not liking her behaviour'.