A Writing in Her Hand: The Commandment of the Get
Deuteronomy 24:1 does not tell a husband to divorce his wife. It tells him what he must do if he does: write a bill of divorcement, place it in her hand, and send her out — a document that frees her to remarry with proof of her new status. But the get's existence as a legal mechanism raised a question the rest of Scripture keeps returning to: a law that regulates how divorce happens is not the same as a law that endorses divorce happening. Malachi and Jesus both address that gap directly — and the prophet Hosea lived it.
A Writing of Divorcement
Notice what this verse does not say. It does not command a man to divorce his wife, and it does not define exactly what "some uncleanness" (Hebrew: ervat davar, literally "a matter of nakedness" or "indecency") means — a phrase debated for centuries. What the verse DOES do is regulate the consequence: if a man sends his wife away, he must write her "a bill of divorcement," put it "in her hand," and send her out of his house. Deuteronomy 24:2 then says she is free to become another man's wife.
The get — the written document — is the operative center of this law. Without it, a woman sent from her husband's house would exist in legal limbo: not living with her husband, but with no documented proof she was free to remarry. The written bill, placed in her own hand, gave her something portable and provable — her new status did not depend on her husband's word continuing to be honored after he had already shown himself willing to send her away.
What the Prophets Said About It
Centuries after Deuteronomy 24, the prophet Malachi confronts the men of Judah for a specific behavior: dealing "treacherously" with "the wife of thy youth," a woman the text says is bound to her husband by covenant (Malachi 2:14). The Hebrew of Malachi 2:16 is notoriously difficult, but the thrust is unmistakable — whatever the exact translation, the LORD is described as a witness against, and grieved by, the casual abandonment of a covenant wife.
Here is the tension the Torah itself leaves open: Deuteronomy 24:1 provides a legal MECHANISM for divorce, regulating how it must be done if it happens. Malachi does not contradict that mechanism — but he makes clear that having a legal procedure for something is not the same as that thing being good, or covenant-faithful, or what God desires. The get regulates an exit. It does not endorse taking it.
Hardness of Heart and the Original Pattern
This same tension surfaces directly in the Gospels. When Jesus is asked whether a man may divorce his wife "for every cause" (Matthew 19:3), the question itself reflects a real debate over how broadly Deuteronomy 24:1's "some uncleanness" should be read. Jesus does not simply rule on that debate — he reframes the entire question. He points past Deuteronomy 24 to Genesis: "from the beginning" God made male and female and joined them as "one flesh," and "what therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder" (Matthew 19:4-6).
When his questioners press him — "why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement?" — Jesus answers: "Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so" (Matthew 19:8). This is the same structure as Malachi's critique, stated even more directly: the get is a real provision, given for a real and hard situation — but it documents an accommodation to brokenness, not the original design. The law manages what covenant-breaking looks like when it happens. It was never the goal.
Key Figures
Study Questions
The get gave a divorced woman something provable in her hand — but both Malachi and Jesus point past the document itself to the covenant it could never fully repair.
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