It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement:
Ver. 31. It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, &c.] This Moses permitted, as a law maker, not as a prophet; as a civil magistrate, not as a man of God; merely for the hardness of the men's hearts, and for the relief of the women, who else might have been misused and mischiefed by their unmannerly and unnatural husbands, Malachi 2:13. Those hard hearted Jews caused their wives, when they should have been cheerful in God's service, to cover the altar of the Lord with tears, with weeping, and with crying out, so that he regarded not the offering any more. A number of such Nabals there are today, that tyrannize over and trample upon their wives, as if they were not their fellows, but their footstools, not their companions and co-mates, but their slaves and vassals. "Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them," Colossians 3:16. He saith not (as it might seem he should with respect to the former verse), Rule over them, and show your authority over those that are bound to submit unto you; but, love them, that their subjection may be free and ingenuous. Live not, as Lamech, like lions in your houses, quarrelsome, austere, discourteous, violent, with high words and hard blows, such are fitter to live in Bedlam than in a civil society. The apostle requires "that all bitterness be put away," all, and in all persons; how much more in married couples! The heathens, when they sacrificed at their marriage feasts, used to cast the gall of the beast sacrificed out of doors. την χολην εξελοντος ερριψαν. (Plutarch.) Vipera virus ob venerationem nuptiarum evomit; et tu duritiem animi, tu feritatem, tu crudelitatem ob unionis reverentiam non deponis? saith Basil. I confess it were better be married to a quartan ague than to a bad wife (so saith Simonides), for there be two good days for one bad with the one, not one with the other; febris hectica uxor mala, et non nisi morte avellenda. (Scalig.) But that should have been looked to beforehand. A hard adventure it is to yoke one's self with any untamed heifer, that beareth not the yoke of Christ. And as grace, so good nature, a courteous disposition, is a thing to be especially looked at in a wife, which Eleazar, Abraham's servant, understood, and therefore singled out as a token of a meet mate for his son. "Let her offer me drink, and my camels also," saith he, Genesis 24:14. But what if it prove otherwise, and men by leaping unadvisedly into the marriage estate, have drawn much misery upon themselves? Quid si pro coniugio coniurgium contraxerint? Varro answereth, Uxoris vitium aut tollendum aut tolerandum est. A wife's faults must be either cured or covered; mended, if we can; made the best of, if we cannot. If the first, she is made better; if the second, we. Qui tollit hanc sibi commodiorem praestat: qui tolerat, ipse se meliorem reddit. (Gellius.) Aurelii vox est, uxor admonenda persaepe, reprehendenda raro, verberanda nunquam.
" Coniugium humanae divina Academia vitae est. "
And hence it cometh to pass, that,
" Quae modo pugnarant, iungant sua rostra columbae:
Quarum blanditias verbaque, murmur habet. "
As on the other side, where this meekness of wisdom is not made use of by married folk, they are together in the house no otherwise than as two poisons in the stomach, as live eels in the pot, as two spaniels in a chain; their houses are more like kennels of hounds than families of Christians: or as so many fencing schools, wherein the two sexes seem to have met together for nothing but to play their prizes and to try masteries. Job was not more weary of his boils than they are of their bed fellows, cursing their wedding day as much as he did his birthday; and thirsting after a divorce as he did after death; which, because it cannot be had, their lives prove like the sojourning of Israel in Marah, where almost nothing could be heard but murmuring, mourning, conjuring, and complaining. Leo cassibus irretitus dixit, si praescivissem.