Because of the hardness of your hearts
he wrote you this commandment.
The Pharisees predicated their arguments, not on first principles, not on God's purpose in creation, but on the facts as they found them in a world tainted by sin and marked by hardness of heart. The consequences of sin made it difficult to see why things were the way the were and therefore the purpose for which they were intended. Reasoning on the basis of how things appeared in a fallen world as though that state expressed God's ultimate intention for things risked enshrining things that were at best concessions as though they were entirely legitimate.
But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.
For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother
and be joined to his wife,
and the two shall become one flesh.
The only real way to understand God's plan for the world was to imagine how the world was before everything needed to be carefully protected against the ramifications of sin and the eventuality of death. After the fall it became necessary to erect barriers and create divisions. This began with clothing, which became necessary when one could no longer take it for granted that another could look upon her without the potential of the gaze using her for the other's own end, be it pleasure or insult or otherwise. But the barriers continued to multiple thereafter, including between Israel and the nations.
They replied,
"Moses permitted a husband to write a bill of divorce
and dismiss her."
As a consequence of sin Moses added legal protocol in the event that a divorce happened anyway in order to limit the harm. This is interesting because although he did not explicitly approve of divorce, neither did he condemn it outright at the time. It was as though the time was not yet right and that there was not grace sufficient enough to restore marriage to it's original purpose. This was the time when God waited patiently and looked with mercy upon his people as they awaited the coming of a savior who could deliver them at last.
So they are no longer two but one flesh.
Therefore what God has joined together,
no human being must separate."
Jesus was the only one who was truly qualified to speak to God's original intention in creation. There was no risk that he would get lost in the weeds of how things merely appeared because of the consequences of sin. Further, he himself was the one who would finally provide a remedy for those consequences. He was therefore qualified not only to explain what God meant in the beginning but also to empower those who heard him to actually begin to live in way that corresponded to that intention. Yet he also did something still greater. For the way that Jesus ultimately gave grace to humanity was by uniting humanity to himself in the great marriage feast of the Lamb. This was something of which even the wonderous reality of human marriage was merely a shadow.
We live in amidst a world still tainted by sin. But we ourselves have been made new creations in Christ, able to live lives that correspond to God's original good purpose in creating, and ordered to a destiny that is something even better than the paradise Adam and Eve chose to forfeit. This grace we have been given is more than enough to enable us to persevere with patience, we who have "seen the purpose of the Lord", as James wrote. We ought not be evasive in speech but to live as though entirely transparent, not as though erecting barriers, but as though tearing them down whenever feasible, that our "Yes" may mean "Yes" and our "No" mean "No".
Bless the LORD, O my soul;
and all my being, bless his holy name.
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits.
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