He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.
Ver. 8. Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts] Ob duricordiam vestram, saith Tertullian. For the relief of the wife, questionless, was this permitted by Moses, not as a prophet, but as a lawgiver; so he suffered them to exercise usury upon strangers. And, at this day, they are, by the states where they live, permitted to strain up their usury to eighteen in the hundred (18%) upon the Christians. And so they are used, as the friars, to suck from the meanest, and to be sucked by the greatest. But what saith our statute? Forasmuch as all usury, being forbidden by the law of God, is a sin and detestable, &c. And what saith our homily book? Verily so many as increase themselves by usury-they have their goods of the devil's gift, &c. And what saith blind nature? Aristotle in one page condemneth both τοκιστην and κυβευτην, the usurer and the gambler. And Agis, the Athenian general, set fire upon all the usurer's books and bonds in the marketplace than which fire Agesilaus was wont to say, he never saw a fairer. But to return to the text: Moses noteth the hatred of a man's wife to be the cause of much mischief,Deuteronomy 22:13,14. Hence a divorce was allowed in that case, Deuteronomy 24:3, lest the husband's hatred should work the wife's ruth or ruin, in case he should be compelled to keep her. He might put her away, therefore, but not without a double blur to himself. 1. By his writing of divorce, he should give testimony to her honesty, and that she was put away merely for his hard-heartedness toward her. 2. If she were again put away by a second husband, the first might not take her to wife again, as having once for ever judged himself unworthy of her further fellowship. Husbands should be gentle to their wives, because of their weakness: glasses are not hardly handled; a small knock soon breaks them. But there are a number of Nabals, a brood of Chaldeans, a bitter and furious nation, that have little growing in their furrows but wormwood; they have a true gall of bitterness in them, Colossians 3:20, whereas the very heathens, at their weddings, pulled the gall out of all their good cheer, and cast it away; teaching thereby the married couples what to do (την χολην εξελοντες, ερριψαν. Plut.). And God Almighty professeth that he hates putting away; threatening also to cut off such unkind husbands as by their harshness caused their wives, when they should have been cheerful in God's services, to cover the altar of the Lord with tears, with weeping and with crying out, so that he regarded not the offering any more, Malachi 2:13. Picus est imago ingrati mariti, the saith Melancthon. The piannet (magpie) is an emblem of an unkind husband, for in autumn he casts off his mate, lest he should be forced to keep her in winter: afterwards, in the spring, he allures her to him again, and makes much of her. The Athenians were wont to put away their wives upon discontent, or hope of greater portions. Solon, their lawgiver (who permitted it), being asked whether he had given the best laws to the Athenians? answered, The best that they could handle.