How to read this page

An Intertextuality Pair — one connection between two passages, shown as linked verse cards: the Later text and the Earlier text it quotes, alludes to or echoes. The Significance essay explains why the link matters and where it points in Christ.

Reference Type— how explicit the link is: Quotation, Allusion, or Echo
Connection Method(s)— how it carries meaning: e.g. Typology, Promise-Fulfillment, Analogy, Longitudinal Theme
Found via— where the connection was identified, e.g. the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge or an Anchor-Text Network

Graph View — tap the constellation icon in the top bar to see this page's connections as a web of light: gold points are passages, and the coloured threads are the connection types. Click any type in the graph's own legend to filter it in or out, and use the expand control for the full-screen night sky.

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Intertextuality Pair

Matthew 5:31 → Deuteronomy 24:1

Quotation

Later text

Matthew 5:31BSB

It has also been said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’

Earlier text

Deuteronomy 24:1BSB

If a man marries a woman, but she becomes displeasing to him because he finds some indecency in her, he may write her a certificate of divorce, hand it to her, and send her away from his house.

Walk the Square · a single-voice walk of this pair around the Clowney square8:13

Significance

The third antithesis cites Deuteronomy 24:1, which regulated the practice of divorce in Israel by requiring a written certificate (sepher keritut, "bill of cutting off") when a man dismissed his wife. Jesus does not overthrow this Mosaic concession but explains that it was given "because of the hardness of your hearts" (Matthew 19:8) — a temporary accommodation to human sin within the Mosaic covenant, not God's creational ideal. Jesus's authoritative response points back behind Deuteronomy 24 to Genesis 1-2 (the one-flesh union in creation) as the norm from which Moses permitted deviation. This antithesis illustrates a key hermeneutical pattern in Jesus's teaching: he honors the full canonical context of the law and adjudicates between what was accommodated due to sin and what represents the eschatological standard of the kingdom. The new Moses restores the primordial order that the old covenant's concessions had obscured.

Found via: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Direct Quotation
Connection Method(s): Redemptive-Historical Progression + Contrast