That is one doozy of a gospel reading, isn’t it?
The question of divorce is a thorny legal question in both the civil and religious law of Jesus' time, as it is in ours.
In ancient Palestine, women were property of their fathers and then their husbands. Without a man at the head of the household, women and children were vulnerable and often marginalized.
All three synoptic gospels include some variation on the question about the legality of divorce, and each gives a different representation of the law.
