16:18

Here Jesus gave an example of how the Old Testament still had authority. Jesus’ statement in this verse was stricter than what the people understood the Law to teach. It revealed more about the way that God values marriage and hates divorce.

16:18a–b

Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery: The Greek verb that the Berean Standard Bible translates as commits adultery refers to a certain type of sexual sin. It refers to sexual relations between a man and a woman when at least one of them is married to another person.

When a man divorces his wife, God still considers their marriage to be valid. So when the man marries another woman, he has been unfaithful to his first wife and sinned. God considers this sin to be adultery.

In some languages it may be more natural to use an “if” clause to translate this verse part. For example:

If anyone divorces his wife and then marries someone else, he is committing adultery.

commits adultery: In some languages the phrase commits adultery does not imply that the man is sinning or doing evil. If this is true in your language, you may need to make this explicit. For example:

he is committing ⌊the sin of⌋ adultery

This verse is very similar to Mark 10:11.

16:18c

and he who marries a divorced woman commits adultery: This statement is similar to the one in 16:18a–b. If a man marries for the first time, but he marries a woman whose husband has already divorced her, it is the same as if he commits adultery. In God’s eyes that woman is still married to her first husband.

If you translated 16:18a–b with an “if” clause, you may want to do the same here:

and if anyone marries a divorced woman, he is committing ⌊the sin of⌋ adultery

a divorced woman: The Greek phrase that the Berean Standard Bible translates as a divorced woman refers to a married woman whose husband has divorced her. In Jesus’ time, a woman could not normally choose to divorce her husband. But if this is possible in your culture, you should translate using a phrase that refers both to a woman whose husband has divorced her and to a woman who has divorced her husband.

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