Memories are stirred. That was where John had been baptizing. That was where John had denounced Herod Antipas for taking his brother’s wife. To ask the question about divorce in that setting was no mere theoretical enquiry. It was inviting Jesus to incriminate himself, to say something that might lead Antipas to do to Jesus what he’d done to John. Jesus sticks to scripture, which they can hardly fault. But in doing so he demonstrates that he is speaking from a world in which God, becoming king on earth as in heaven, is transforming the very hearts of human beings as part of his project of new
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