breaking covenants

⁴And it is much better not to make a vow, than, after a vow, not to fulfill what was promised. ⁵You should not use your mouth so as to cause your flesh to sin. And you should not say, in the sight of an Angel, “There is no Providence.” For God, being angry at your words, may scatter all the works of your hands. ⁶Where there are many dreams, there are many vanities and innumerable words. Yet truly, you must fear God.

⁶And so, now they are not two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no man separate.”

¹⁷Therefore, he who knows that he ought to do a good thing, and does not do it, for him it is a sin.

⁹And I say to you, that whoever will have separated from his wife, except because of fornication, and who will have married another, commits adultery, and whoever will have married her who has been separated, commits adultery.”

¹⁵Brothers (I speak according to man), if a man’s testament has been confirmed, no one would reject it or add to it.

¹⁰But to those who have been joined in matrimony, it is not I who commands you, but the Lord: a wife is not to separate from her husband.

⁴May marriage be honorable in every way, and may the marriage bed be immaculate. For God will judge fornicators and adulterers.

¹And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: ²“Son of man, make known to Jerusalem her abominations. ³And you shall say: Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem: Your root and your lineage is from the land of Canaan; your father was an Amorite, and your mother was a Cethite. ⁴And when you were born, on the day of your nativity, your umbilical cord was not cut, and you were not washed with water for health, nor salted with salt, nor wrapped with cloths. ⁵No eye took pity on you, so as to do even one of these things to you, out of compassion for you. Instead, you were cast upon the face of the earth, in the abjection of your soul, on the day when you were born. ⁶But, passing by you, I saw that you were wallowing in your own blood. And I said to you, when you were in your blood: ‘Live.’ I tell you that I said to you, in your blood: ‘Live.’

¹Where do wars and contentions among you come from? Is it not from this: from your own desires, which battle within your members?

¹⁸Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery. And whoever marries her who has been divorced by her husband commits adultery.

¹“And to the Angel of the Church of Ephesus write: Thus says the One who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands: ²I know your works, and your hardship and patient endurance, and that you cannot stand those who are evil. And so, you have tested those who declare themselves to be Apostles and are not, and you have found them to be liars. ³And you have patient endurance for the sake of my name, and you have not fallen away. ⁴But I have this against you: that you have relinquished your first charity. ⁵And so, call to mind the place from which you have fallen, and do penance, and do the first works. Otherwise, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. ⁶But this you have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.

³⁹A woman is bound under the law for as long as her husband lives. But if her husband has died, she is free. She may marry whomever she wishes, but only in the Lord.

¹⁴And you have said, “What is the reason for this?” It is because the Lord has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth, whom you have despised. Yet she was your partner, and the wife of your covenant.

¹⁷and who leaves behind the Guide of her youth,

¹Or do you not know, brothers, (now I am speaking to those who know the law) that the law has dominion over a man only so long as he lives? ²For example, a woman who is subject to a husband is obligated by the law while her husband lives. But when her husband has died, she is released from the law of her husband. ³Therefore, while her husband lives, if she has been with another man, she should be called an adulteress. But when her husband has died, she is freed from the law of her husband, such that, if she has been with another man, she is not an adulteress.

¹And Moses explained to the sons of Israel all that the Lord had commanded him. ²And he said to the leaders of the tribes of the sons of Israel: “This is the word, which the Lord has instructed:

¹⁰If anyone will have committed sexual acts with the wife of another, or will have perpetrated adultery with his neighbor’s spouse, they shall die a death, both the adulterer and the adulteress.

¹⁷But I say this: the testament confirmed by God, which, after four hundred and thirty years became the Law, does not nullify, so as to make the promise empty.