Matthew 5:31 records a rule from the Old Testament law that Jesus is about to correct: a man who sent his wife away was to give her a written certificate of divorce. Jesus is quoting a common teaching of his day, which was that divorce required paperwork but was otherwise easy to obtain. The verse is best read as the setup for his stronger teaching on marriage in the verses that follow. It was spoken by Jesus during the Sermon on the Mount to the crowds and his disciples gathered on the hillside.
“It was also said, ‘Whoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorce,’
Matthew 5:31 (WEB)
What Matthew 5:31 Means
The phrase “It was also said” signals that Jesus is quoting something his listeners already knew. He is not inventing a new law here. The saying points to Deuteronomy 24:1, where a husband who divorced his wife had to give her a written document, which protected her and showed that the separation was final. The certificate was a legal safeguard, so the rule itself was meant to be fair to the woman in a culture where divorce could leave her without security.
Jesus is not condemning this law. He is pointing out that the legal permission had come to be treated as the whole of the matter. The question had shifted from “how do we treat one another faithfully?” to “how do we do this correctly on paper?” The verse does not promise that the paperwork makes a divorce right before God. It simply names the rule people were using as a measure of their obedience.
The Context of Matthew 5:31
Matthew, the Gospel writer, is traditionally identified as a former tax collector and one of the twelve disciples, and his Gospel was written mainly for a Jewish audience who knew the Law well. The Sermon on the Mount, of which this verse is a part, opens with the Beatitudes and then moves through a series of “you have heard it said, but I tell you” statements. Each one takes a commandment and presses it down into the heart: anger toward a brother, lust in the mind, and now the conduct of divorce.
Just before the verse, Jesus speaks about lust in the heart and about the seriousness of sin, using strong images of plucking out an eye or cutting off a hand. Just after it, he returns to marriage and says that divorce for reasons other than sexual immorality causes the wife to become an adulteress. Read in this setting, the verse is the hinge between a warning about inner faithfulness and a teaching about faithfulness in marriage that goes beyond the written rule.
Key Phrases in Matthew 5:31
Deuteronomy 24:1
When a man takes a wife and marries her, then it shall be, if she finds no favor in his eyes, because he has found some unseemly thing in her, that he shall write her a bill of divorce, and put it in her hand, and send her out of his house.
(WEB)
This is the Old Testament law that Jesus is quoting in Matthew 5:31. Reading it alongside the verse shows the original rule and the protections it was meant to give. Seeing the source helps you understand why Jesus is not rejecting the law but calling for a deeper reading of it.
Matthew 19:8
He said to them, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it has not been so.
(WEB)
In this later passage, Jesus explains that Moses allowed divorce because of the hardness of people’s hearts, and that this was not the original design. The verse adds to the picture from Matthew 5:31 by showing that the permission was a concession to human failure, not God’s ideal for marriage.
A Short Prayer From Matthew 5:31
Lord, you see the places in my life where I am tempted to keep only the rules that protect me and ignore the love that should guide me. Search my heart where I have hidden behind the letter of the law. Teach me to be faithful in my words, my promises, and my actions toward those closest to me. Give me the courage to be honest and the humility to seek your ways when I am hurt or afraid. Let my commitments reflect your steady faithfulness to me. Amen.