Episode 7: Eunuchs in the Kingdom–What Messiah had to say about divorce and being single

Why on earth did Yeshua/Jesus teach about eunuchs after denouncing the Hillelite ruling on divorce (which will be a big part of this teaching)? Maybe a better question is–would He approve of our tendencies to treat single believers like they are second class citizens, or diseased and in need of a cure? Hold on to your hats, this one will get a bit controversial as we look into the marriage controversies during the first-century.

Here’s the link to that article I talked about: https://foreverymom.com/marriage/enough-enough-church-stop-enabling-abusive-men-gary-thomas/

Here is my very rough transcript–please forgive any grammar and spelling errors.

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Hi, this is Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and welcome to Character in Context, where we explore Scripture in its original historical context and talk about how God is communicating His expectations to us as His image-bearers—Because, after all, if all this information doesn’t bring us closer to God’s character, it’s just useless brain candy..

You can catch my blogs at www.theancient bridge.com and my children’s context teachings at contextforkids.com. I also have two youtube channels where you can listen to the archives of past Character in Context broadcasts as well as watch my video teachings for adults and kids, which can be accessed through my websites, as can my books and my family curriculum series.

And remember my weekly disclaimer—scholars are an important part of the Kingdom, but the Kingdom is bigger than scholarship. We need all sorts of servants, and we need to give them the respect they are owed according to the area in which they have expertise—whether that is in working with the homeless, in the missions field, getting justice for the oppressed, in their field of bible study, etc.

Anyone who is functioning in their calling and devoting their life to God is worthy of our respect, whether we agree with them 100% on this and that or not.

I was recently studying Matthew Chapter 20 and came across Yeshua’s/Jesus’s “Eunuch teaching” tacked on at the end of His rebuke of Hillel’s divorce for “any cause” ruling.

³ And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” ⁴ He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, ⁵ and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?⁶ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” ⁷ They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?”⁸ He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. ⁹ And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”¹⁰ The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” ¹¹ But he said to them, “Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. ¹² For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.”

Although the focus of this teaching today is the very culturally scandalous idea that a person can be single and serve God (something that is still strangely looked down on in many circles today), we can’t really do that without a bit of background about the situation on the ground in the first century.

There were two factions of Pharisees—the schools of Hillel and Shammai, both founded in the first century BCE, so before the common era. Shammai was far stricter than Hillel in every sense, whereas Hillel was generally more liberal. Quite often, we see Yeshua siding with the more liberal House of Hillel when questions are raised—with one notable exception.

Gittin 90a, based on Gittin Chap 9, Mishnah 10 (Get meaning the divorce documents)

MISHNA: Beit Shammai say: A man may not divorce his wife unless he finds out about her having engaged in a matter of forbidden sexual intercourse [devar erva], i.e., she committed adultery or is suspected of doing so, as it is stated: “Because he has found some unseemly matter [ervat davar] in her, and he writes her a scroll of severance” (Deuteronomy 24:1).

ובית הלל אומרים אפילו הקדיחה תבשילו שנאמר כי מצא בה ערות דבר

And Beit Hillel say: He may divorce her even due to a minor issue, e.g., because she burned or over-salted his dish, as it is stated: “Because he has found some unseemly matter in her,” meaning that he found any type of shortcoming in her.

ר’ עקיבא אומר אפי’ מצא אחרת נאה הימנה שנאמר (דברים כד, א) והיה אם לא תמצא חן בעיניו:

Rabbi Akiva says: He may divorce her even if he found another woman who is better looking than her and wishes to marry her, as it is stated in that verse: “And it comes to pass, if she finds no favor in his eyes” (Deuteronomy 24:1).

So, we see this terrible problem going on during the lifetime of Yeshua, and after, since the Hillel ruling is the official Halakah (although I am not aware of anyone who practices this heartless ruling today). Men felt that God, through Moses, gave them the right to divorce not just for sexual infidelity, but for “any cause.” A woman could be dumped for absolutely any reason—from actual wrongdoing to simply aging. Such a ruling strikes at the heart of God’s continual cry through the prophets against oppression.

Their question is, “Is it lawful for us to leave our wives for any cause?” They are concerned with legalism, what do they have the legal right to do as opposed to what they should do. The Deuteronomy 24 case law, let’s look at that real quick here:

“Suppose a man takes a wife and marries her. Now if she doesn’t find favor in his eyes because he has found something indecent in her, he is to write her a certificate of divorce, hand it to her and send her out from his house. ² When she leaves his house, she may go and become another man’s wife. ³ Now suppose the second husband dislikes her and writes her a certificate of divorce, and he hands it to her and she leaves his house—or suppose the second husband who took her to be his wife dies. ⁴ Then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled—for that would be detestable before Adonai. You are not to bring guilt on the land that Adonai your God is giving you as an inheritance.”

Whereas Hellenized Judaism had come to twist and turn Torah into some pretty creative laws, they often ignored the plain meaning of passages—namely that this was not giving permission for a man to divorce, but instead discussing what a man was required to do IF he divorced a woman who was “indecent.” The woman clearly needs to be indecent, and it needs to have been found in her, not merely suspected. So, IF a man finds himself in this situation, and IF he chooses to divorce her, this is what he must do—send her out with a certificate of divorce leaving her free to remarry—and this is what he must never do—namely, remarry her after she has had sexual relations with a new husband because that specifically makes her forbidden to him (the meaning of defiled, which sounds worse than it is). But the school of Hillel was taking the matter entirely out of context in order to make literally anything a matter of indecency so that they could obtain younger, prettier, more socially advantageous wives who just might be better cooks, or whatever…

Yeshua pointed out to them that they were looking at Torah entirely wrong (siding with Shammai here) and that Moses didn’t give them his blessing to divorce (nor did God), but gave them permission. Very different. Divorce wasn’t God’s goal—even if it did become the goal of the Hillelites. Moses gave men an out if their wives were promiscuous, and he also gave the women the right to be tested by the Sotah, so men couldn’t just accuse without hardcore evidence. In reality, the Torah makes divorce hard and removed it from the ANE whims of men. That was forgotten in the first century.  But this was the world that the disciples and all these men had grown up in. To them, it was unthinkable that there should be any restrictions on casual divorce. Josephus, as I have mentioned previously, was a priest, a Pharisee—and married four times. Think about this the next time you assume that the Samaritan woman at the well was a loose woman. Women were so easily divorced and cast aside, that it was shameful. If the husband did not desire to return the ketubah money received from her father, he might just send her away without a Get, leaving her without much alternative to shacking up with some guy willing to feed her.

So, Yeshua points out that this is not a matter of law at all, but permission in a worst-case scenario. The Hillelites were trying to “proof-text”—a form of cherry-picking where one uses Scripture not to find out what is true and good, but in order to justify what they wanted to do. We can see how shocked the disciples were to hear that this wasn’t acceptable:

¹⁰ The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.”

Translated: “Dude, if we have to remain married to the same gal forever as long as she is faithful, it’s just better not to marry anyone.

How cavalier! First-century Israel was only marginally monogamous in all too many cases. When one enters into marriage with an eye, the actual expectation beforehand, to getting out and getting a new partner whenever it gets boring or whatever, how is that any different than adultery? It is monogamy only in the loosest of terms—and really more like serial adultery. These guys had created a letter of the law type of system that gave them the illusion of holiness while taking up and discarding women at will. Yeshua was telling them that this made them, the guys, adulterers—married only in the loosest of terms and certainly not in God’s eyes, except to their first wives with whom they had dealt cruelly and falsely.

As Yeshua said, divorce is permitted, but it is not a goal, nor is it to be seen as a way to satisfy worldly desires. We don’t have time to talk about it, but I recently read an amazing article called “Dear Church: It’s time to stop enabling abusive men” by a man named Gary Thomas about one of the forms of “hardness of heart” we humans inflict upon another, and a good reason for why divorce is permitted in the Torah.

But I said today’s teaching was really about something else so here goes:

¹¹ But he said to them, “Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. ¹² For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.”

So, what is a eunuch? A Eunuch can take one of two forms in antiquity. (1) Men might be born without the ability to reproduce. Perhaps their testicles never descend, or they are deformed in this way or that. To serve as a priest was forbidden by men with crushed testicles because physical perfection was required before the altar, even though they could eat of all the holy tithes set aside for priests. Hermaphrodites were not unknown and are even discussed in the Mishnah. They would not marry. (2) of course, court officials in the ancient world and especially those in contact with royal women, were actually made eunuchs, meaning their testicles were removed. There is a chance that Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were eunuchs, but it is only a theory based on 2 Kings 20:18 and Is 39:7. Certainly, we see eunuchs mentioned often in the book of Esther. Jezebel had eunuchs in her service (2 Kings 9).

It isn’t until we get to Is 56 that we see eunuchs being spoken of as assets in the Kingdom

56 This is what the Lord says: “Maintain justice and do what is right, for my salvation is close at hand and my righteousness will soon be revealed. Blessed is the one who does this—the person who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath without desecrating it, and keeps their hands from doing any evil.” ³ Let no foreigner who is bound to the Lord say, “The Lord will surely exclude me from his people.” And let no eunuch complain, “I am only a dry tree.” For this is what the Lord says: “To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant—to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will endure forever.

So, Yeshua was not pulling this reference to eunuchs out of nowhere—He was, however, expanding the definition of the honored and accepted eunuch to include the single believer who was unmarried and therefore not reproducing—which was what was “wrong” in antiquity with being a eunuch. Yeshua flat out upended their world here, even if it isn’t obvious to us. Judaism has never embraced celibacy (well, except for within certain Essene groups—but not all). In fact, Jews considered it an eternal commandment, and not an option, to be fruitful and multiply and therefore considered marriage to be a commandment as well. So, to put a seal of approval on not marrying, not having children, saying you could serve God without all that—it was surprising. Certainly there were exceptions, like Anna who was widowed and serving in the Temple,  but in general, this was not something that would have been celebrated or acceptable.

And so why, with Yeshua being so clear here, and Paul echoing the sentiments to the Corinthians, that one can serve God without marriage and children, do we still treat single believers as though they have a disease that we need to cure? Instead of simply being another facet of the Body? An entirely legitimate facet differing only in marital status?

Let’s look at some words that have been used for the unmarried, not so long ago and even today in some cultures: spinster, old maid, perpetual bachelor. Obviously, the men have it better in this regard.

So why do married people perpetuate the myth that being with another person is always better than being alone when married people know darned well that it isn’t true. Yes, a great marriage is great, but there is no loneliness more terrible than having married just to marry and finding yourself in an entirely different type of loneliness. I hear from women all the time—just heard from a friend who was a widow yesterday, how the women in her family who are single, divorced, or widowed are so terrified of being alone that they chase after any available man. Regardless of suitability. Just so that they won’t be single, as though it is worse than being in a terrible relationship with a guy who isn’t relationship material.

Because, in the congregations of Messiah, it really does tend to be a married people club, just as it is, even more, a married people with children club. Being barren, I know what it is to always be on the outside when women start talking about pregnancy stories, birth stories, and breastfeeding adventures. I should imagine that being single in congregations can be exponentially worse. Especially when married ladies decide that their most important purpose in life is to come up with ways of setting up their single friends with whatever single guy they happen to know. It’s akin to admitting illness on social media and having everyone decide to diagnose you and offer you oftentimes questionable advice.

Here’s the hardcore, irrefutable fact. Women outnumber men in almost every single culture, and a lot of men are determined not to marry. Let’s up the ante—in congregations, women GREATLY outnumber the men. So, out of one side of our mouths, married women are telling their single friends that they need to get married and not be alone and have kids before their biological clock runs out (very questionable reasons for pursuing marriage, frankly, especially given the growing infertility rates). On the other hand, we are telling them not to be unequally yoked, when we can all see that there is a desperate shortage of male believers in congregations as it is. It’s the ultimate Catch-22 situation. You have to get married, but there aren’t enough men to go around, and especially not enough believing men. We drive them to internet relationships, and I have seen enough of them end in some really scary ways that I think we ladies ought to just mind our own business.

And don’t get me going about my sister in Africa. I have been hearing her woes for many years about how, even though she is a minister of the Gospel, hardworking and dedicated, all the married ladies (including her own mom) think she is somehow “less than” because she hasn’t fallen in love and gotten married. That’s really messed up when we stop and think about it. All her service to God is nothing compared to her marital status, and I am betting that a lot of the ladies judging her aren’t even happily married. Marriage should not be a status symbol or a measure of worth. Not among the Body of Messiah.

In Biblical times, a woman was guaranteed a marriage IF she came from an honorable family and her father could put up a dowry. You didn’t have to have another person fall in love with you, who just happened to be the same person you were also in love with. Love didn’t enter into it. Marriage was a contract between families, and that’s it. No romance. None of what we would consider love at all. Lucky if they knew and liked one another beforehand.

Being married isn’t a requirement, it isn’t always possible and therefore we need to stop judging people based on it. In some congregations, it comes pretty darned close to discrimination. No one should be judged or seen through any non-sinful facet of their lives. I personally have no clue on earth how I ended up married. Sure wasn’t based on merit, and still isn’t.

Let’s talk real quick about some unmarried brothers and sisters who make us all look bad in comparison.

Sam Alberry. Mother Theresa. Amy Carmichael. Corrie and Betsie ten Boom. Gladys Aylward. Yeshua. Paul. Jeremiah. CS Lewis (until he was 58 years old)

These beautiful saints were/are single and did/do incredible works for the Kingdom BECAUSE they were/are able to devote themselves fully to God.

An unmarried believer isn’t a single or divorced person who happens to be a believer, but instead, a believer who just happens to be single or divorced. We ought to define them by the weightier matter and not the lesser. They aren’t our personal projects to hitch up, as though a full and beautiful life can only be had in marriage, but co-laborers working in the service of the greatest and most fulfilling relationship of all. We need to include them as members of our family, on equal footing, because they are.

In short, they don’t need to be fixed because they aren’t broken. We need to stop setting people up for disappointment and feeling like failures over this thing that is really outside anyone’s control. Personally, I am not married because of my inherent worth, but in spite of many, many, many deep flaws. I am not as wonderful as a multitude of single people. Yeshua is very clear—no one has to marry. It isn’t a requirement for Kingdom legitimacy or for happiness, or for true spiritual fruitfulness and it certainly isn’t a litmus test for worth. It can’t possibly be! Everyone out there has a true soulmate, and it is our Savior, period. If we find a human who comes in second, great. Yeshua isn’t some sort of platitude or consolation prize—and shame on us if we see the divine relationship as somehow “less than” and our single brothers and sisters as somehow broken, or charity cases—when they are neither. We need to accept them as who they are—and great googly moogly, invite them over to dinner just as we would another married couple, without trying to set them up with someone. They deserve the opportunity to be seen as what they are, brothers and sisters in Messiah who aren’t just sociological experiments for wannabe matchmakers. Right? Of course, right.