{"id":106428,"date":"2026-08-31T12:16:33","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T16:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/?p=106428"},"modified":"2026-08-31T12:16:33","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T16:16:33","slug":"can-a-divorced-person-remarry-bible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/bible-resources\/bible-answers\/can-a-divorced-person-remarry-bible\/","title":{"rendered":"Can a Divorced Person Remarry? What the Bible Says"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='booster-block booster-read-block'>\n                <div class=\"twp-read-time\">\n                \t<i class=\"booster-icon twp-clock\"><\/i> <span>Read Time:<\/span>12 Minute, 56 Second                <\/div>\n\n            <\/div><p>It is late, the house has gone quiet, and you have typed this question into your phone before. Typed it, skimmed the first three results, and closed the browser before anyone could see the screen.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Can a divorced person remarry?<\/strong> You are not asking as a debate. You are asking because there is either someone standing in front of you now, or there might be one day, and you need to know whether wanting that makes you a person God is disappointed in.<\/p>\n<p>Here is something worth knowing before you read another comment thread about it: the passage most often used to shut this conversation down actually answers the question out loud. Not in a footnote. In the second verse.<\/p>\n<h2>The Question Underneath the Question<\/h2>\n<p>Almost nobody asking this is hunting for a loophole. That is the assumption people make, and it is usually wrong.<\/p>\n<p>The person searching this at midnight is usually asking something much smaller and much heavier: <em>am I still allowed to have a life?<\/em> They have already grieved. They have already replayed every version of it. They are not trying to get away with anything. They are trying to find out whether a door was locked behind them.<\/p>\n<p>So let us do something simple. Instead of collecting opinions, let us read the actual passage the arguments are built on, and notice what it says in plain words.<\/p>\n<p>And if part of what you are looking for is not an answer but a way back to feeling close to God again in ordinary life, there is a free video guide and companion PDF made for exactly that.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"convertkit-form wp-block-convertkit-form\" style=\"\"><script async data-uid=\"6491fb8269\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.kit.com\/6491fb8269\/index.js\" data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" data-no-defer=\"1\" data-no-optimize=\"1\" nowprocket><\/script><\/div>\n\n\n<h2>Can a Divorced Person Remarry? Start With the Passage Everyone Skips<\/h2>\n<p>When the Pharisees came to test Jesus about divorce, they were quoting a law from Deuteronomy. That law is short. Here is how it opens:<\/p>\n<blockquote>&#8220;When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house.&#8221; (Deuteronomy 24:1, KJV)<\/blockquote>\n<p>That is the verse people quote. Here is the very next line, which almost never gets quoted alongside it:<\/p>\n<blockquote>&#8220;And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man&#8217;s wife.&#8221; (Deuteronomy 24:2, KJV)<\/blockquote>\n<p>Read that again slowly. In the passage sitting at the middle of every argument about divorce in the Bible, the remarriage of the divorced woman is stated plainly \u2014 no warning, no condition, and not one word of shame attached to it. She may go and be another man&#8217;s wife.<\/p>\n<p>It is not written as a grudging concession. It is not written as a fall from grace. It is simply what happens next.<\/p>\n<h2>What the Bill of Divorcement Actually Did<\/h2>\n<p>To see why that line carries so much weight, look at what the &#8220;bill of divorcement&#8221; was for. The text is specific about one detail that is easy to read straight past: the certificate is placed <em>in her hand<\/em>. Not filed away by him. Handed to her.<\/p>\n<p>That detail is doing real work. A woman sent out of a household with nothing in writing would have had no way to prove her own status \u2014 not married, but unable to show it. The certificate is what settled the question, and it is what makes verse 2 possible at all. Without a document in her hand, &#8220;she may go and be another man&#8217;s wife&#8221; would have been an empty sentence.<\/p>\n<p>Which means the law that so many people read as a permission slip for men to leave is, at the same time, doing something else entirely: making sure the person being sent away walks out with a future instead of a permanent limbo.<\/p>\n<h2>The One Door Deuteronomy 24 Actually Closes<\/h2>\n<p>The passage does close a door. It is worth seeing exactly which one.<\/p>\n<p>Verses 3 and 4 continue the scenario: the woman remarries, and then that second marriage also ends, either by another divorce or by his death. And then comes the restriction:<\/p>\n<blockquote>&#8220;Her former husband, which sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after that she is defiled; for that is abomination before the LORD: and thou shalt not cause the land to sin, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.&#8221; (Deuteronomy 24:4, KJV)<\/blockquote>\n<p>That is the prohibition. That is the whole prohibition. The one person forbidden to marry her is the man who sent her away in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>Sit with what that accomplishes. It means a man could not treat a wife as something he could put down and pick back up when it suited him. He could not dismiss her in a bad season and reclaim her in a better one. The moment he wrote that certificate, he permanently gave up the right to change his mind.<\/p>\n<p>Every other door in the passage stays open. The only one sealed shut is the one leading back to him.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>The only door that passage locks is the one leading back.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h2>Paul Answered the Question Even More Directly<\/h2>\n<p>Centuries later, Paul was writing to a church in Corinth full of people whose lives were already tangled long before they ever heard about Jesus. Some were married to spouses who wanted nothing to do with their new faith. Some had simply been left.<\/p>\n<p>He speaks directly to the person who was abandoned:<\/p>\n<blockquote>&#8220;But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us to peace.&#8221; (1 Corinthians 7:15, KJV)<\/blockquote>\n<p>Not under bondage. Not still tied. Not obligated to spend a lifetime waiting at a window for someone who chose to walk out the door. And look at the reason Paul gives for the release \u2014 not &#8220;because the rule allows it,&#8221; but because peace is what God has called us to. The release exists for the sake of the person who was left.<\/p>\n<p>Then, a few lines later, he says something so plain that it is genuinely strange how rarely it shows up in these conversations:<\/p>\n<blockquote>&#8220;Art thou bound unto a wife? seek not to be loosed. Art thou loosed from a wife? seek not a wife. But and if thou marry, thou hast not sinned; and if a virgin marry, she hath not sinned.&#8221; (1 Corinthians 7:27-28, KJV)<\/blockquote>\n<p>Notice the order of it. Paul tells the married person to stay put. He tells the person already loosed from a marriage not to go rushing after another one. And then \u2014 before anyone can harden that into a verdict \u2014 he adds the sentence a great many people have never been shown: <em>if you do marry, you have not sinned.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Paul&#8217;s honest counsel in that chapter is that the single life is often simpler, and he says so without dressing it up; he even warns that married people &#8220;shall have trouble in the flesh.&#8221; But simpler is not the same thing as holier. He gives advice. He does not hand down a sentence.<\/p>\n<h2>The Turn: The Only Locked Door Faces Backward<\/h2>\n<p>Something shifts when you set those two passages side by side.<\/p>\n<p>Most people carry this question as though the Bible&#8217;s default answer is <em>no<\/em> \u2014 as though any yes has to be argued for, evidenced, and defended against a raised eyebrow. But in the oldest law on the subject, remarriage is never argued for. It is simply assumed. And in the clearest instruction Paul gives about it, it is named outright as something that is not sin.<\/p>\n<p>The prohibitions that do exist in this territory are real, and they point in a specific direction: at the person who treats another human being as disposable. At the man who discards a wife and still wants the option of taking her back. At the one who breaks a covenant casually and expects it to cost nothing.<\/p>\n<p>They were never aimed at the person standing in the wreckage, quietly asking whether they are allowed to love someone again.<\/p>\n<p>That is not softening scripture. That is what the text says once you read the second verse alongside the first.<\/p>\n<h2>Where the Honest Tension Still Sits<\/h2>\n<p>It would be dishonest to stop there and pretend no difficulty exists, so let us name it.<\/p>\n<p>When Jesus was pulled into this argument, He raised the standard rather than lowered it:<\/p>\n<blockquote>&#8220;And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.&#8221; (Matthew 19:9, KJV)<\/blockquote>\n<p>That is a weighty sentence and it should not be smoothed over. Christians who love the Bible genuinely disagree about how widely it applies, and this article is not the place to settle a question thoughtful people have weighed for two thousand years \u2014 nor to give you counsel about your particular situation, which no article can honestly do.<\/p>\n<p>Two things are still worth holding on to. First, the men Jesus was answering were arguing about how <em>easily<\/em> a man could dismiss a wife. He was speaking to people hunting for the widest possible exit, not to people already sitting in the rubble of one. The specific word He chose for the exception is also broader than most English Bibles let on, and <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/what-jesus-teaches\/what-did-jesus-say-about-divorce-porneia\/\">that one word is worth a closer look on its own<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Second, nothing He said erases Deuteronomy 24:2 or 1 Corinthians 7:28. The Bible holds all of it at once: marriage is weighty, breaking it casually is serious, and the person who has already lived through one ending has not been handed a permanent one. If the phrase &#8220;God hates divorce&#8221; has ever landed on you like a verdict, <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/bible-resources\/bible-stories\/what-does-the-bible-say-about-divorce-and-remarriage\/\">the actual wording behind that phrase is worth reading closely too<\/a> \u2014 it is doing something quite different from what most people assume.<\/p>\n<h2>What This Means for You Today<\/h2>\n<p>You may still have a hard conversation ahead of you. With a pastor. With your own conscience. With someone who has been carrying an opinion about your life and has never once asked you about it. Understanding a passage better does not make any of that disappear.<\/p>\n<p>But it can change what you believe God thinks of you while you are having it.<\/p>\n<p>You are not required to read the Bible as a locked door with your name on it. In the oldest text on this subject, a woman who has been sent away is handed a document, in her own hand, and told she may go and build a life. That is what the law was for. That is what it says.<\/p>\n<h3>3 Things You Can Do Today<\/h3>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Read Deuteronomy 24:1-4 in full \u2014 all four verses, in one sitting.<\/strong> It takes under a minute in any free Bible app. Read verse 2 twice, and notice how little drama the text attaches to it.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Write down the exact sentence you have been carrying, and who actually said it.<\/strong> Not &#8220;the Bible says&#8221; \u2014 the real source. A pastor? A parent? A stranger in a comment thread? Then write the verse reference you just read next to it. Seeing the two on the same page changes their relative weight almost immediately.<\/li>\n<li><strong>If part of what you are carrying is resentment \u2014 toward them, or toward yourself \u2014 spend ten minutes with our free <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/am-i-ready-to-forgive\/\">Am I Ready to Forgive?<\/a> assessment.<\/strong> Having permission to move forward and being able to actually do it are two different things, and the second one usually needs some untangling first.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h3>Questions to Sit With<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Whose voice do you actually hear when you picture God being disappointed in you? Is it God&#8217;s voice, or someone else&#8217;s that you have been attributing to God for years?<\/li>\n<li>What have you quietly stopped hoping for \u2014 not because you decided against it, but because you assumed it was no longer allowed?<\/li>\n<li>Where are you still asking permission from someone who is no longer in your life?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>A Prayer for the Question You Have Been Afraid to Ask<\/h3>\n<p>God, I have carried this question for a long time and I have been afraid of the answer. I am not looking for a way around anything \u2014 I just want to know whether there is still a life in front of me. If I have been holding a verdict that was never Yours to hand me, help me set it down today. And where I still have grieving left to do, walk with me through it instead of rushing me past it. Thank You for being a God who hands people a future instead of a locked door.<\/p>\n<h3>What Do You Think?<\/h3>\n<p>Why do you think verse 2 of Deuteronomy 24 gets left out so often when people quote verse 1? Tell us in the comments.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"convertkit-form wp-block-convertkit-form\" style=\"\"><script async data-uid=\"6491fb8269\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.kit.com\/6491fb8269\/index.js\" data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" data-no-defer=\"1\" data-no-optimize=\"1\" nowprocket><\/script><\/div>\n\n\n<h3>Share This<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Everyone quotes Deuteronomy 24:1 about divorce. Almost nobody quotes verse 2, which says the divorced woman &#8216;may go and be another man&#8217;s wife.&#8217; No conditions. No shame. It is just what happens next.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;I spent years assuming the Bible&#8217;s answer about remarriage was no, and that any yes had to be argued for. Turns out the oldest law on the subject simply assumes it. The only door that passage locks is the one leading backward.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Paul wrote &#8216;if thou marry, thou hast not sinned&#8217; \u2014 right there in 1 Corinthians 7. Nobody ever showed me that verse.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Questions People Are Asking<\/h3>\n<p><strong>Can a divorced person remarry according to the Bible?<\/strong><br>\nDeuteronomy 24:2 states plainly that a divorced woman &#8220;may go and be another man&#8217;s wife,&#8221; and 1 Corinthians 7:28 says of a person loosed from a marriage, &#8220;if thou marry, thou hast not sinned.&#8221; Jesus&#8217;s words in Matthew 19:9 add a serious qualification, and Christians genuinely disagree about how widely that qualification applies \u2014 but the Bible&#8217;s oldest law on the subject assumes remarriage rather than forbidding it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What does Deuteronomy 24:2 say about remarriage?<\/strong><br>\nDeuteronomy 24:2 reads, &#8220;And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man&#8217;s wife.&#8221; It follows immediately after the verse describing the certificate of divorce, and it states the divorced woman&#8217;s freedom to remarry with no condition and no expression of disapproval attached.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What was the bill of divorcement in the Bible for?<\/strong><br>\nThe bill of divorcement in Deuteronomy 24:1 was a written certificate placed directly into the divorced woman&#8217;s hand. It documented her status so she could prove she was no longer married, which is what made the remarriage described in the following verse possible for her at all.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Does the Bible forbid any remarriage?<\/strong><br>\nDeuteronomy 24:4 forbids one specific remarriage: the first husband, &#8220;which sent her away,&#8221; may not take her back after she has married someone else. That restriction falls on the man who initiated the divorce rather than on the woman, and it is the only remarriage the passage prohibits.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What does &#8220;not under bondage&#8221; mean in 1 Corinthians 7:15?<\/strong><br>\nIn 1 Corinthians 7:15, Paul writes that when an unbelieving spouse chooses to leave, &#8220;A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us to peace.&#8221; The phrase means the abandoned spouse is not held bound to the deserted marriage, and Paul names peace, rather than obligation, as the reason for that release.<\/p>        <div class=\"booster-block booster-reactions-block\">\n            <div class=\"twp-reactions-icons\">\n                \n                <div class=\"twp-reacts-wrap\">\n                    <a react-data=\"be-react-1\" post-id=\"106428\" class=\"be-face-icons un-reacted\" href=\"javascript:void(0)\">\n                        <img decoding=\"async\" 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                      <\/div>\n                <\/div>\n\n            <\/div>\n        <\/div>\n\n    ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Can a divorced person remarry? The same passage the Pharisees used against Jesus says plainly that she may \u2014 and Paul went further. Here&#8217;s what it means.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":106426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_wp_convertkit_post_meta":{"form":"-1","landing_page":"0","tag":"0","restrict_content":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[669,3718],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible-answers","category-relationships-and-family"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106428"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106429,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106428\/revisions\/106429"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}