In the Old World, carnal and fallen men had begun to take advantage of the divorce laws in their culture. Though marriage had been established in the beginning as a religions institution, a rite intended to bind the participants forever, yet in the days of Moses divorce had been permitted “because of the hardness” of the hearts of the people (see Matthew 19:3-8).
By the time of Christ the situation had degenerated markedly. One historian writes: “Among Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries no one questioned the legitimacy of divorce. The only question was what constituted adequate grounds; and it was this question of grounds, not the legitimacy of divorce as such, that split religious schools into opposing factions.
The teacher Shammai, for one, took the conservative position: the only offense serious enough to justify divorce was the wife’s infidelity. Shammai’s opponent Hillel, famous for his liberal judgments, argued instead that a man may divorce his wife for any reason he chooses, ’even if she burn his soup!’ The well-known teacher Akiba, who agreed with Hillel, added emphatically, ’and even if he finds a younger woman more beautiful than she.’” (Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, pp. 13-14.)
Given his understanding of life among the Palestinian Jews in the meridian of time, one can appreciate why the Savior would desire the reform of a system that allowed men to slip capriciously in and out of marriage. His was a call to a higher righteousness, an invitation to consider carefully the sacred nature of marriage and the importance of fidelity and commitment between married partners.