2
Ne 7:1 Where is the bill of your mother¡¯s
divorcement?
In
this verse, the relationship between the Lord and the House of Israel is
compared to the relationship between husband and wife and the relationship
between master and servant. The Lord asks the house of Israel if He is
responsible for the dissolution of the relationship. This could be proven if
the Israelites had received the bill of divorcement. This document was required
by the Law of Moses to prove the divorce between a man and a woman (see Deut
24:1-4 and Matt 19:7-8). The rhetorical question posed obviously implies that
they had received no such document because the Lord had not rejected them but
that the children of Israel had rejected Him. The same implications applies to
the relationship between master and servant, ¡®for
your iniquities have ye sold yourselves.¡¯
¡°In the time of Isaiah, if a man was pressed by his creditors, he had the possibility of relieving his debt by selling his children as slaves. (Ex. 21:7; Neh. 1-5; Matt. 18:25.) And if he died, a creditor might take his children as payment. (2 Kgs. 4:1.) This slavery was not permanent; the person was indentured to work for a fixed number of years. In answer to the question ¡®To whom has the Lord ever been in debt?¡¯ Isaiah answers that the Lord is indebted to no one and therefore has not been forced to sell Israel; Israel's separation and captivity is her own fault.¡± (Victor L. Ludlow, Isaiah: Prophet, Seer, and Poet [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1982], 420 as taken from Commentaries on Isaiah in the Book of Mormon, ed. by K. Douglas Bassett, [American Fork, UT: Covenant Publishing Co., 2003], 32)
Jeremiah
repeats this imagery, explaining that the children of Israel were ¡°divorced¡±
from the Lord in two great phases represented by their being taken captive by
their enemies. The first occurred when the northern Kingdom (Israel) was sacked
by the Assyrians. The second was when the southern Kingdom (Judah) was sacked
by the Babylonians. Jeremiah¡¯s comment laments that the house of Judah should
have repented when they saw what happened to their sister, Israel. Instead,
they ¡®played the harlot¡¯:
¡®¡¦Hast thou seen that
which backsliding Israel hath done? She is gone up upon every high mountain
and under every green tree (to practice idolatry), and there hath played the harlot (by making love
to other gods).
And I said after she had
done all these things, turn thou unto me. But she returned not. And her
treacherous sister Judah saw it.
And I saw, when for all
the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away (sacked
by the Assyrians), and given her a bill of divorce;
yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot
also.¡¯ (Jer 3:6-8)