Does God Hate Divorce?

There are plenty of challenges with interpreting this text, but it’s become famous anyway:

"For I hate divorce, says the LORD the God of Israel ..." - Malachi 2:16 RSV

Other translations render if very differently, but we’re not going to focus on that right now. Feel free to look into it on your own. Today we’re going to take that phrasing at face value but we’re going to complicate it with another verse.

God is speaking to the people of Israel and lamenting how they’ve been unfaithful, abusive, and neglectful of their covenant relationship with God. That lack of covenantal honoring showed up in how the people of Israel treated the poor, marginalized women, and prophets of God, amongst other ways. So what does God do?

God divorces Israel.

Yep, that’s what the scriptures say. Here it is: I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries. - Jeremiah 3:8 NIV

So can God do something that God hates - is that even possible? And if God did it (in this situation, choosing a divorce), does that mean we get to do it? And how do we handle these competing scripture passages anyway? And perhaps most telling: if God chooses divorce, why haven’t we heard about that before? (Why have we only heard shaming done by religious people about God hating divorce… and potentially hating those of us who are divorced)?

Part of the idea today is to learn how to lean into the tensions in the text, to wrestle with God, and to question some of the assumptions we’ve been handed over the years… hopefully leading us to a truer, deeper, and more just relationship with God, ourselves, and our world.