10:1 indicates that Jesus was now to the east of Jerusalem on the other side of the river Jordan and again met with crowds. In the teaching he gave there was continued training of the disciples for the task ahead of them. The Pharisees appeared again and tried to trap him into saying something by which they could accuse him of being a false teacher. They put a question to him about divorce. According to the Law, a Jewish man could divorce his wife (Deuteronomy 24: 1) but there was no provision in the Law for a woman to divorce her husband. In the time of Jesus -two views were upheld by the rabbis about the interpretation of Deuteronomy 24: 1. One important rabbi, Hillel, ruled that a man might divorce his wife for any reason which caused him displeasure. Another rabbi, Shammai, ruled that a wife could be divorced only because she had committed adultery with another man. The point that emerges from Deuteronomy 24: 1 and its rabbinic interpretations was the subordination of the wife to the husband in marriage; a husband who followed the views of Rabbi Hillel could divorce his wife for trivial reasons without consideration of her feelings or needs.

When Jesus answered their question he first identified the reason for which the Law allowed divorce. 'Moses wrote this law for you because you are so hard to teach' (10:5). This was certainly not what the Pharisees had expected to hear and in saying it, Jesus had showed his authority to interpret the Law. Jesus then went on to show that in the original plan of God it was his intention that man and wife should be united 'so that they are no longer two but one'. As this was God's will, 'man must not separate, then, what God has joined together.' In this teaching marriage is given a spiritual significance which the rabbis had ignored, It was God's will for husband and wife to live together in the union he .had planned for them; marriage was not merely a social arrangement to cater for man's physical needs. In indicating that marriage is a sacramental union Jesus also removed the idea of the subordination of the woman to the man. Husband and wife were partners, each equally responsible for preserving the lifelong union which was God's will for them. The teaching of 10:10-12 is to the disciples alone, in which Jesus showed what the Law did not, that a man who divorced his wife to marry another woman, wronged his wife (10: 11). In future, the disciples would need to understand what the true marriage relationship involved, when they had the responsibility in the Church of guiding those who wished to marry according to the will of God (1 Corinthians 7).