Divorce & Remarriage: A Biblical View

Marriage as a Covenant and an Image of Christ and the Church

All right, welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Elias Ayala and today we have a very special guest. Every guest that I have on is special in some way, but everyone's equally special.

Yeah, that's our equally special. Well when I had Matt slick on I said we have a special guest, but there are two types of special there's the uppercase S special and the lowercase s special one is the Special and the other one is a literate legitimately special so Matt slick He can take those sorts of jokes, but I mean special for you in the good way.

All right, so That's like could take it he's got he's special in a completely different kind of way. Yeah, but yeah, so my special guest of course those who? Follow Mike wingers YouTube channel. You obviously will know who he is he is a wonderful resource with regards to Things that are very pastoral apologetical and theological and so that's what I appreciate about Mike's YouTube channel has got a lot of content that covers a wide variety of things that I think are very useful.

To people who are engaged in ministry and of course, which is our focus to apologetics. So I'm very happy to welcome Mike here today but he's not going to say anything for another minute or two because I have to make a couple of Announcements and then I'll let you say hi to everyone personally.

How does that sound? Perfect? All right, great. Well, um, there are a couple of guests coming up it very shortly next week. I have Dr. Vern Poythress from Reform Theological Seminary to talk about how the Trinity how the doctrine of the Trinity Impacts everything and so we're gonna be taking a look at how the metaphysics of the triune God kind of spills into everything that we do and Allows us to see the world in a way that makes sense.

And I think we're gonna we're gonna have a really good time with dr. Poythress. He was very generous in responding to my my invitation. And so he will be coming next Tuesday also. On July 9th, I will be having dr. Hugh Ross on which is very very interesting.

I had dr Jason Lyle on a couple of shows ago who is a very well-known proponent of young earth creationism and as I was speaking with Dr. Ross's secretary or contact person. She told me that dr. Ross loves to interact with people and I was like, you know what?

Let me see if I can set up Jason Lyle with Hugh Ross. And so I reached out to dr. Lyle and just waiting for a response. So hopefully that will happen. So I'm gonna try to make that happen. Maybe we could have a moderated discussion between the both of them I think that'd be really great.

Oh, no, I'm sorry. I'll watch that. Yeah. Yes, I hope that will happen if not, I do apologize but I am trying to get some guests here that I think people will will enjoy and learn a lot from so Just wanted to get that out of the way.

All right. Well, our guest today is Mike winger. He is a I'll make him blush. He is a YouTube superstar. He's like absolutely not. Actually, he does have a really great YouTube channel got over 134 ,000 subscribers with over 398 videos or so a lot of content.

So Definitely, you're most likely going to know more about Mike winger than myself. But if you don't know about Mike winger go over to his channel and subscribe there's so much helpful Information there.

And of course if you're enjoying reveals apologetics I greatly appreciate if you subscribe to the rebuild apologetics channel as well without further ado. Let me introduce Mike winger, why don't you say hello to everyone?

Who's watching? Hey everybody. It's good to be here.

Eli, I'm grateful to get to come on. Eli and I are friends actually. Even though we totally disagree on a couple issues. We agree on even more issues. More and the more important ones I think so. So yeah, it's good to be here and happy to join with you and talk about this issue.

I've been studying a lot and teaching on recently which I actually avoided teaching for years.

Studying Divorce and Remarriage in Scripture and History

Divorce and remarriage. Yeah, it's it's definitely a controversial topic and a very personal topic. It's one of those topics that when you speak to it people are quick to say who are you? To speak into my private life and my marriage and and all those other sorts of things.

So it's definitely a touching topic but an important one and that's why I'm very excited to have you on today since I follow Your your channel you you have some videos on this topic already in a giant one I think one over three hours long where you cover a lot of your research in this specific topic.

So very very excited. All right. Well, great. Let's let's begin then. Um, I want to ask you a few questions and then perhaps you can Interact with them and let's see where the where the conversation goes.

I do want to clarify something I've received multiple messages from people when I was kind of sharing this on Facebook. I am NOT debating Mike Winger. Good luck with your debate. There's no debate. It says Eli Mike Winger and Eli didn't say Mike Winger verse Eli.

All right, so we're here just talk. I want to learn from him. He's studied this topic far more than I have and so I'm here to learn and hopefully you guys will benefit greatly and of course Mike has been generous to Take some questions in the the live chat as well if you have them, so please send them in I will go back and share them towards the end.

And Mike can answer them for you. All right. All right. Well Seeing that this is a topic that you cover Personally in great depth on your own channel. How long if you don't mind me asking did it take you to study this issue until you were comfortable?

Sharing your thoughts with with everyone in the in the end throughout the interwebs. Yeah. Well, um.

Okay. So let me just say I'm uncomfortable with it with the issue. Huge issue. Major consequences in people's real lives and the truth is that I would for years I was just confused like I just go. I don't know the right answer.

Life is complicated. Life is hard. I'm worried about about giving the wrong advice and people taking my advice and I know That when I make a video teaching on a topic saying this is the Bible says that the debt.

I build my case. People are making life choices. And in this case life choice is about divorce. Based upon my teaching I just feel a lot of trepidation about it like very sincerely I do and I was like I said I was confused about this and even pastors that I talked to about it.

Oftentimes. They're just going with their gut. They're giving advice that's not based oftentimes on scripture. It's just based on their gut and other times it's based on scripture. But it's only based on like three verses and I'm like, well There's a lot more that the Bible teaches than just those three verses.

You know you quote three verses and you ignore the rest of the teaching on a topic. You can have an unbalanced view. So what I did was I just did like an isolated study. I said, I'm just gonna focus on this topic and I've said I did over 200 hours of research.

That's that's an understatement. I don't know how many hours I didn't clock at all it's just it was hundreds of hours and There's a lot of scripture to cover a lot of various passages to study in depth and then try to see how they all work.

Together to communicate what God's telling us there's historical issues. Background content that you want to get into there and you want to read scholarship on those topics. There's linguistic issues the debates about like what did Jesus mean when he said except for pornea sexual immorality?

Well, what does that mean? There's recent scholarship in the past like 20 years. There's been a lot of writing on this topic in particular. And so I wanted to kind of like get up-to-date on all that and not just read it and quote it.

But understand it like right, you know, whether I should side with this or that, you know. What truths are here what maybe mistakes are here that kind of thing? So I think I do have clarity on the issue now largely and so that's why I went ahead and Did my teaching on it, which is why that video is three hours long.

It's a summary of just a.

Thousand issues that I covered in detail. So yeah, sure. Now you said that you had to study the Bible and of course linguistic issues. Interpretive issues and I would imagine that cultural issues play a huge role.

How did you come at it? What were the resources you used to kind of learn the cultural context of how they understood marriage divorce remarriage within the ancient world?

Well, you know as soon as you pick up any commentary on the Gospels where Jesus is talking about marriage and divorce They all will say the same thing well back in the first century there was this debate between these two schools of Jewish thinking the Hillelite school and the Shemite school and.

So you you know any commentary will give you access into these people. But when you really want to understand what were the Shemites and Hillelites saying? What were they really thinking you need to go beyond most commentaries most of the comments that they give?

So I looked up for instance David in Stone Brewer who I don't agree with his his thesis his ultimate conclusions. But he does give us tons of access to Primary sources, so I'm looking at the primary sources, you know.

Reading the debates in the Mishnah between the Shemite and Hillel schools what they were saying. And so yeah looking at that, you know look looking up, you know Scholarly resources and as well as just reading large portions of the Mishnah itself along with like a Jewish divorce text divorce certificates and Greco-Roman divorce and you know, because it's very different the two very different cultures handled it differently.

So in the Jewish context in the Gospels Jesus speaking in one Context and we have to understand that in first Corinthians 7 when Paul writes about divorce and separation. It's a whole different context different culture and different meanings for the word separation so this is yeah, it's just Lots of trying to get down to primary sources as much as possible through sort of scholarship.

Basically, it's like checking footnotes, you know. Check the footnotes and you go look up that sources is pretty much we talked about this before I end up I end up being a footnote fanatic. Yeah.

The Biblical Meaning and Importance of Marriage

Well before we get into the issue of divorce and remarriage I think it's very important that we talk about the biblical view of marriage itself. And I want I want to kind of have you emphasize that important aspect of why it's so important to go into the The seriousness of divorce and remarriage and how that all works with the backdrop of how important marriage itself is to God.

What is. How would you explain for example the biblical conception of marriage and why it's important both? Relationally. Horizontally between the man and the woman and vertically what this represents before the eyes of God.

Why don't you jump in to that for us, please?

Well this you know. It's so important and so valuable that I almost feel like whatever I say will understate the value of and the importance of marriage. It's actually part of the creator to order. You know God makes Adam and Eve and the two become one and this is part of God the creation account this is like our inherent design as male and female and and It you know Jesus commenting on this says that God joins us together.

God joins us together and the two become one. There's like an identity connection between the man and woman in marriage. It is it's so, you know theologically between man and woman. It's it's it's it's a it's more than an agreement like a business deal or something like that.

It's a bigger deal than your your allegiance to your country or any of those other things. So it's and it's also a central institution of all society. It's more central I think than than government itself would be just the the actual place of marriage in society now, you know.

Horizontally, it represents Jesus and his love for the church. Paul talks about this in Ephesians, right that the husband love your wives as Christ loved the church and it just he draws all these parallels between God's love for us and the husband's love for his wife the wife's Yielding and submitting to her husband in a godly fashion and the church is submitting to To Christ so that so that any words I say at this point May not give you that amazing Wow of marriage.

But it's it's a bigger deal than most people realize if I could just put it that way and you could you could kind of feel. This right. Does your parents marriage or divorce if they were divorced did that matter?

Or look at your friends and your family and and the effect of marriage or divorce, you know. Either in the wonderfulness of it or the horror of it and how big of a deal it is. So, yeah, I think it's huge.

I think I don't think we cannot an overstate the importance and value of marriage.

We can throw a little theological bone to people who are like kind of the theological Connections with many marriages theological everything is theological for the Christian. But how would you say. And then from here?

We're gonna jump into some of the more specifics of why we have you on. But how would you explain the connection between marriage and the Trinity? Do you see a connection between the intimacy of that relationship and the inter trinitarian love relationship between the persons within the Trinity?

You see a connection there.

Well, there may be. I'm trying to think of how I would spell that out to you to be careful when you're. You're drawing analogies, especially with the Trinity. And so there is a two and a two Ness and a oneness that's there.

So we see that. Maybe you could explain what you're thinking there. I don't know if I would have the right answer. Yeah. Well, I.

This is something that I think about often when I think of marriage and there's just something about the concept of being in covenant relationship and love and I think the the love union between the husband and the wife and kind of a lesser degree reflects this inter trinitarian love relationship that has been going on from all eternity and.

The amazing thing is as we are creating the image of God and and God creates us to have relationship with us. He invites us into covenant relationship into this intimate triune relationship. So there's this eternal love that God Invites us into the midst of and I always find that marriage and in kind of a lesser degree Reflects that intimacy that really is related and reflects our intimacy with with God.

And that's why you have that imagery in the Bible of the bride and the the bridegroom. So I don't know if there's a necessary connection there, but I've always reflected upon that and saw that as an interesting.

Connection if there is one. Yeah I think that. I I would agree and I I think that the connection in my mind though is isn't so much about the Trinity. As it is about just for what it's worth is about man's joining to God.

So the connection of mankind to God and that that we become one with him in a sense That is different than the nature of the Trinity. But is connected to the relationship of the Trinity if that if I could try to be careful with my terminology here.

All right, very good well. What I find interesting now if we can move, okay, so marriage obviously, it's a very serious issue. It's very important. There's a theological context there, especially for Christians who are stepping into marriage.

Understanding its seriousness and its theological and biblical importance that should really weigh heavy. When you're going through the midst of your marriage through the difficulties of relationship and considering well.

Maybe I don't want to be with this person anymore. We always have to remember that backdrop of our commitment and how that relates to God our covenant between our significant other and the covenant We made before God super important.

Okay, however when we're dealing with this issue of divorce and remarriage, I think Christians tend to they tend to categorize what they think are important moral issues and they will for example Christians will say Action a is really really serious and we frown upon that yet.

It seems to me and you could explain if this is your understanding in your experience when it comes to marriage issues. They tend to fudge up on The seriousness of it now, of course, it's serious, but they tend to think well.

It's even though I don't you know, the relationship isn't working out, but I think it's the right thing. We don't love each other as much as we did before and I think it's just a good time to separate and they begin to talk as though you know, it's a bad thing, but it's not as serious as You know as What we understand it to be with regards to what the Bible has to say about it.

So I guess the question to you if I can kind of ask the question clumsy a clumsily in your estimation. How important do you think it is for the average Christian to be clear and consistent on the issues of divorce and its moral dimensions?

You understand what I'm trying to ask. Does that make sense? Yeah.

I think so and I think that we have a parallel with with with Jesus and the Gospels here because the culture where he's speaking to them. Divorced nobody likes divorce. Divorce wasn't considered a good thing.

It was even you know, there was a sense of shame associated with it, but It was so much more acceptable than it should be. By the people divorce in general and so there there was this new school of thought.

Well new school it came in. You know The first century BC is when it kind of took root as like an official way of thinking about things. But it was the Hillel school that I was talking about earlier and they were they basically had something called any matter divorce and They basically looked at divorce as like the right of a husband but you know, it's just you have a right to divorce if you think that that's what needs to happen and Jesus he Directly confronts this with such extreme statements as to say you you divorce someone and I'll add the phrase unjustly Here and we can talk more about that later, but you divorce someone unjustly.

And then you marry another you commit adultery. Hmm, and this is something nobody thought back then. No, I mean none of the shemites the Hillel eyes. Nobody was thinking this that shocked everybody wait, you know, it's one thing to say the divorce was wrong.

But you're saying that you're still morally obligated to your spouse if the divorce was wrong and that if you marry another you're actually committing a Sin, you're committing adultery. And that would that's Jesus his way of waking up I think his culture and his community to the importance and value of marriage.

So we we can't as Christians. We can't take Jesus seriously and look at divorce as well. You know, it's it's unfortunate. But once it happens, it's happens and then you move on and you just go marry somebody else.

There's there's more to it than that but but you can't have that view you can't have that view and be be a Solid Christian and we've also substituted personal happiness as as the sort of measure of a marriage as opposed to The nature of marriage as being the so the instant not just the institution but the nature of the relationship God joins together.

We instead of focusing on that and the obligations of a husband and a wife to one another we focus on Degrees of personal happiness and if the personal happiness like goes below some kind of arbitrary point.

No, I'm justified in breaking this thing up because the purpose of this thing is my happiness instead of happiness being like a secondary Important but secondary issue. Yeah. You ever see the movie The Wedding Singer with Adam Sandler.

Oh my may have I feel like I did when it came out a Long time ago, but I can't remember.

Adam Sandler got stood up at his wedding and he's kind of depressed on his front steps and and the woman comes you know his fiance comes and she's like well, I. She goes. I'm not I love you, but I'm not in love with you, you know, and she of course in that movie.

They weren't married, but I think a lot of people have that reasoning, right? It's like I was in love with you, but I'm not in love with you anymore. And I think the right thing to do is to you know, and of course, you know.

The standard the biblical standards are not being upheld at that point. It's a very self-centered a kind of way of coming about now. You did say something though that I wanted to ask but I didn't want to interrupt you.

You said that you have the Hillel school and you have the what was the other school again?

So they're named after two rabbis. So Hillel was the rabbi who preceded Shem I as like the sort of the leaders the lead rabbi of the time and The the Hillel school said hey, you know basic effectively.

It's a it's the right of a husband to get a divorce for any any reason he wants. It was called any matter divorce. He can divorce his wife if he finds in her any matter of issue. Burns burns his food.

They use these crazy examples to show how liberally they interpret this. Then the shimmy ite school this, you know, which which follows the rabbi Shem I. Their view coming to the time of Jesus their view is you can only divorce if you find an issue of nakedness.

And Nakedness basically they meant some kind of you know Impurity some sort of justifying impurity and they would relate this to adultery for sure. But they would also say if a woman goes around and she has like her shoulders uncovered and her hair undone.

Which was like a signal to the world that she was promiscuous and looking for adulterous relationships. Then you could divorce her for for doing that. So if she did things that led toward adultery, then that was also considered legitimate.

I don't think Jesus sided with either of these schools. But but those were the two schools.

That's where my question was. You said something that I didn't know because I haven't studied this topic in great depth. You said that Jesus had a view that was neither. It was was not an element of any of those schools of thought.

Was this unique in His in history. I mean you study the history of how people understood marriage divorce and remarriage. Is Jesus position here where he says that if you you know unjustifyingly Separate, you know divorce and you marry another woman you're committing adultery.

Was that unique to Jesus? Is that not found anywhere else in the ancient world or um?

Gosh that's a good question. I I don't I don't know if I can say that nobody thought it but I in my studying I didn't come across anybody who proclaimed that sort of thing their view of men in particular.

Because so when Jesus says that about a man their view of men in particular. So at the time Judaism still was practicing polygamy. They basically didn't feel like a husband when he okay, if you were married and you married another woman.

That wasn't considered adultery in their view now I'm not saying that that's a biblical or moral view, but that that's that was their view. That was our culture. So when Jesus is like you divorce her you marry another woman.

That's adultery like this is like wait a minute. What like at what point is it is a man marrying another woman adultery at all in there in their culture? Well, it just it wasn't now there was some pushback against polygamy at the time.

And and they slowly got there eventually where the the Jewish community said, yeah, we reject polygamy. But it took a lot longer than the first century to do that. Yeah, yeah, I don't know if Jesus who you was completely unique, but it definitely wasn't like a mainstream view.

Yeah, now you may mention of the multiple wives and I guess this is not directly related. But now that you mentioned oh, that's interesting again. I've never this isn't something I haven't really looked into.

When they took on many wives, I know it's very much of a cultural thing, but was this. Against scripture. I mean a lot of people's understanding of marriage is the union between a man and a woman and that's it.

And you know what people mention? Well, David had many wives. They'll be like, well, that was the culture back then. Well, yeah, but. Does that conflict with what you know what God set up at the beginning?

I wanted to address that real quick.

Polygamy, Divorce, and Jesus’ Stronger Reading of Genesis

Yeah. So Jesus's comments on this are actually stronger than most people realize and it's and it's in studying the background data that you you you realize He's not only arguing against Any matter or divorcing for whatever reason you think is a good reason.

Although I think there are exceptions. We'll talk about that later. But in general most divorces don't fall into those exceptions so most divorces fall into a sinful you know act and then the remarriage thereafter was a sinful act, but when it comes to polygamy Jesus's comments are actually a lot stronger than people realize so.

You know, they're debating Deuteronomy 24, right? They go well, why did Moses allow is his the husband to write a certificate of divorce and divorcer? And Jesus says from the beginning it was not so right that God got me the male and female and then he says the two Become one flesh now.

What's interesting is Just by adding the phrase the two. Which it does not appear in the Genesis verse that Jesus is referring to but appears later in Genesis that the two become one flesh. He's tapping into an ongoing Discussion going on in the first century and we can actually read about this in the Qumran texts.

So in the stuff they've uncovered in the Qumran scrolls, which a lot of people are familiar with There's there's a passage where they argue against polygamy and one of the ways in which they argue against polygamy is they say From the very beginning they don't use that exact terminology, but they say yeah in Genesis God says, you know male female There's one man one woman the two become one flesh.

That was a subtle argument against polygamy Just two then they tap that into Genesis 7 where they're going into the ark two by two and they thought saw this as like an affirmation of you know one man one woman and So when when you have there's there's a lot more to it probably want to bog down the whole thing today with it.

But there's an ongoing cultural discussion about polygamy and those who are pushing against it are Using certain terminology and Jesus uses that terminology when he's talking against against divorce Itself and so he speaks against polygamy and divorce that that was something I didn't expect as I was doing this study was to find That Jesus's words were much more strong against polygamy.

Like I said when he's like, hey, you marry another you commit adultery. They're like wait under no condition. Do we think do we think that's true? If it's a divorce, it's a divorce. You marry another you marry another that's that's not we're worried about the divorce.

We're not worried about the remarriage, right? That that was not something that was on their mind. And so yeah, all those all those things are you against polygamy? I've asked me for clarity if I if I muddied things up at all there.

That makes sense and I think it's it's important to understand too that Jesus often in explaining certain laws would kind of not add but kind of Intensify the implications for example when Jesus says if you if you look at a woman lustfully you've committed adultery with her in your heart.

I mean, that's it seems more strict than just the law, you know, the rule of the fail on the face of it. So I think that's a very interesting interesting thing to see Jesus kind of Clarify, you know these debates he kind of magnified it just to highlight the importance of the law and how serious it is.

Yeah, that's that's super important. Now. This is an interesting topic because it relates to so many other issues. Morally, and as you mentioned before culturally how. How should Christians approach this topic if they wish to study what the Bible has to say with regards to marriage?

Divorce remarriage and all those related issues. Does it simply boil down to reading the portions of Scripture that seem to speak to this area? I mean does the Bible speak to this topic? Unambiguously, I mean it's something this is an area where people disagree.

It's one of the things that I hear skeptics say, you know. You Christians don't agree on anything and then they'll you know. They'll list off a whole bunch of things that Christians disagree on and one of them that pops up is you know?

Marriage and divorce and all this other stuff. How should we approach this? So I do think that the key.

The number one issue is yeah just gathering all the relevant to all this is the key all the relevant texts in Scripture and and then you can come up with Your interpretation and you can test it against all of those texts.

And if you if your interpretation doesn't fit with every text that teaches on it. Then you don't have the correct biblical view and this is something I see a lot and the people who I think do this. The most are the more are the more strict.

Perspective. They quote Roman 7 if a woman marries another while her husband's alive that she's committing adultery. You know, this is wrong and then they quote Jesus in Mark and Luke in particular where he doesn't offer any qualification.

He says you divorce your wife and marry another you commit adultery you marry a woman who's divorced you commit adultery and there's no. There's no other explanation there. But then they ignore Matthew 5 Matthew 19 where Jesus says except for sexual immorality right, like except if it's sexual immorality and they tend to ignore or they find really Unlikely ways of explaining away those passages where they ignore first Corinthians 7 where Paul talks about About you have an unbelieving spouse who's unwilling to stay with you.

You're not you're no longer bound or enslaved and then and you're free and the implication is you're free to marry and there's a whole debate on that but You also look at Ezra and Ezra. There's like a there's a there's a command to divorce.

That Ezra gives out and he said and he's giving it out as a way of obeying God. I mean the context seems to imply that there's at least one divorce situation. They sometimes will ignore Jeremiah 3 where God divorces Israel.

So we have to like take all of these and put them all together that that's that's important but it but then it gets complicated and it gets challenging and and You know, I I don't subscribe to the idea that if for Christianity be true.

Everything in the Bible has to be easy to understand. I don't think that that's there's. I don't think that's rational. I don't think that view is rational at all. I know a lot of atheists like to lean on that and they literally will dismiss Christianity because it's hard to understand.

Well that I mean and they can't believe in quantum physics either and they can't believe it. They can't believe in a whole host of things. Yeah, so yeah. But there is also relevant background information that does help and it really helps enlighten us and then you can add the background data.

To see if your view is consistent with that as well. So this helps support good interpretation. We look at the Jewish debate on divorce at the time. We we ask questions like in 1st Corinthians 7 when Paul talks about a woman separating from her husband or a man divorcing his wife.

His separation and divorce. Are they the same thing or they a different thing? Well, we look at Roman culture to get the answer to that turns out there that they're the same thing. There's also language issues like Jesus.

What do you mean by porneia? There's a whole I have a whole section where I deal with that. When Paul said that the belief the believing woman or man was not enslaved to a marriage with an unwilling unbeliever.

Does that mean they're also free to marry someone else? How would the original audience have taken that phrase not enslaved? Yeah, and these are these are these are questions that you have to go Into history to help enlighten you on on those on those issues.

Yeah.

So it's not simply going through and giving a survey of the relevant biblical passages. You need to dig a little deeper for some of that more wider context.

Yeah, you yeah to be wise we do we do need to know here's the thing in my opinion when you when I've gone through All that background stuff. I then look at it and go. I could have Come to these same conclusions.

Doing the survey of Scripture alone, right? But the background data serves as a as a check to make sure I'm interpreting those texts correctly. That that's it. Yeah, right.

All right. Very good. And then I had a question real quick. It just popped in my mind. I'm suppose you had an ancient Israelite who has the law of Moses. He kind of backslides and kind of does his own thing.

He kind of falls in love with a woman from the surrounding pagan nations and he marries her. Mm-hmm, and then you know a prophet comes along and says, you know, don't you know, don't marry the don't take the women of these Surrounding nations around you.

And the person comes to a sense and says what have I done, you know, Lord, please forgive me. Should that person do what would have been expected of that person with that person had to? Divorce his pagan wife in that context or did the law given that situation require him to say?

Okay, you didn't do what was right, but you're in the situation and still remain in that that Union. Yeah.

So, okay, I would give an easy answer to this and say hey you have a covenant. You shouldn't have entered guess what you entered it honor the Covenant, you know, we have Joshua with the Gibeonites. He was told not to make any sort of treaty or or contract, you know of peace with the people of the land.

But the Gibeonites deceived him. They were like, hey, we're from far away. Remember they got moldy bread and they travel over in the book of Joshua and they're like look how far we look at our samples Are worn out we're from real far away.

Let's make a treaty. Joshua does not inquire of the Lord. He makes the treaty and then later finds out who they really are and God requires them to honor the treaty to honor the deal that the the Covenant that he made with them to be used the correct term Covenant and so I think that there's an element of that.