1 Corinthians 7:12,13 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

To the rest Who are married to unbelievers; speak I By revelation from God; not the Lord Who, during his ministry, gave no commandment concerning the matter. If any brother hath a wife that believeth not Is a heathen, not yet converted; let him not put her away If she consent to dwell with him. The Jews indeed were obliged, of old, to put away their idolatrous wives, Ezra 10:3; but their case was quite different. They were absolutely forbid to marry idolatrous women; but the persons here spoken of were married while they were both in a state of heathenism. It is probable that some of the more zealous Jewish converts, on the authority of that example of Ezra, contended that the Corinthians, who before their conversion had been married to idolaters, were bound to put away their spouses, if they continued in idolatry. Therefore the sincere part of the church having consulted the apostle on that question, he ordered such marriages to be continued, if the parties were willing to abide together. But as a difference of religion often proves an occasion of family quarrels, and there was danger, if the believers should be connected in marriage with idolaters and open sinners, lest they should be drawn by their partners into similar vices and abominations, the apostle advised them, in his second epistle, in contracting marriages after their conversion, by no means to marry idolaters, 2 Corinthians 6:14. And On the other hand, if any Christian woman have an unbelieving husband, whether he be a Jew or a Gentile, and he consent to dwell with her, let her not leave him Nor put him away, as the expression αφιετω αυτον (the same that is used in the preceding verse) implies. And it is certain, though the Jewish law did not put it into a woman's power to divorce her husband, yet that in those countries, in the apostle's days, the wives among the heathen had a power of divorce as well as the husbands; and that the Roman women practised it in a most scandalous manner, as did several Jewish ladies of distinguished rank; and among them, even Josephus's own wife. See Lardner's Credibility, part I, vol. 2. p. 890, Juv. Sat., ver. 222-230.