Translation
He says to them, “MOSES, in light of your dried-up heart,
Go to footnote numberpermitted you to dismiss your wives, however, from the beginning it has not been this way. (See comment below.)
Paraphrase
He said to them, “RESCUED permitted you to choose dismissal as an option because of the hard, dried condition of your hearts, but dismissal was not included in God’s original plan. (See comment below.)
Footnotes
1
This is a compound word made up of the word for “dried out or rough and hard,” and the word “heart”. It describes a condition of something being overly dry due to a lack of water or a lack of oil. Water represented, among other things, God’s gift of life, and oil always represented the Holy Spirit. A heart without water belongs to a person who is devoid of compassion or flexibility and lacks true life; a heart without oil belongs to a person that is obstinate, unyielding to the Holy Spirit and hence rebellious toward God.
The Allowance for Divorce
Notice that the Pharisees placed the possibility of divorce on the lips of Moses as if it were a command, but Jesus refers to is as an exception to the ideal that God had in mind.
The verb form used in the clause “From the beginning it has not been this way,” refers to action done in the past but emphasizes the continuing results of that action. This means that when the Law granted permission for divorce it did not annul the original design of the Creator. God has always wanted us to live in ways that reflect His character and purpose, which is simultaneously what is best for us. According to the creation account, that means one man married to one woman for life. Divorce was not intended to be part of the picture, but it was allowed because many people refuse to follow God’s way.
What Did Jesus Mean by a Dried Up Heart?
Option 1: That “Dried up hearts” referred to the lascivious women. But it does not make sense that an allowance is made to the husband because of the lasciviousness of the wife.
Option 2: Men’s inability to resolve marriage problems – why was this not punished? Allowing it and giving a way out of the problem created by neglect would only encourage it.
Option 3: Moses was complicit in the errors of men who actually deserved punishment, not license. No, Jesus would not have refered to Moses at all if he had participated in wrongdoing.
Option 4: That a woman did indeed have the right to initiate a divorce and it was allowed by Moses for the woman’s protection. However, that seems to be a modern thought process injected into the ancient text, and not what we find in the Scriptures themselves. Men were the ones with the option to divorce.
Option 5: (from Barnes and Matthew Poole): Divorce for any reason was already common among the Israelites before the days of Moses and God allowed Moses to grant the people some allowance for dismissal rather than a harsh punishment for something which was already common among them. Yet he limited it in an attempt to make it less common and encourage better choices on the part of both husband and wife. The limitations were that it had to be put in writing, there were often judges involved in the process, and Dt. 24 allowed it only for a very specific reason. I consider this to be the best way to understand “dried up hearts”.