This will be a Bible study on infidelity and fornication. The word fornication appears in Scripture whereas the word infidelity does not, however we do read about the word adultery in the Scriptures. In this regard this study will be concerned with God’s law on Adultery as well as biblical fornication. In days gone by, the primary meaning of infidelity had to do with religious disbelief. However, there was a secondary meaning referring to a breach of trust, treachery, or deceit, and a lessor use was unfaithfulness in marriage. However, today no one seems to speak much of adultery but mainly to infidelity which has become more palatable to the mind than the word adultery.

In reading this verse we see that while we are told not to commit adultery, we are not told what adultery is. And unfortunately, when we try to find out in our concordances, such as Strong’s Concordance, we find the definition severely lacking, as the concordance really does an injustice to the word, defining it as "to commit adultery." But, this is not a definition at all, as we are told nothing at all about what act it is that constitutes the committing of adultery. It is like defining "walking" as "to walk," or crying as "to cry." Good grief, what kind of a definition is that? But in defense of Strong’s Concordance it does add the words: "Woman that breaketh wedlock." And that is the real meaning of the Hebrew word as it pertains to a woman. But please notice that it does not say "a man that breaketh wedlock" or a "woman and man who breaketh wedlock." Thus the definition tells us what a woman does to commit adultery, but from this definition many people conclude that the same would be true for a man. But, at this point we have insufficient information to come to that conclusion.

In my 1828 Webster’s Dictionary we find the meaning expanded to include men as it states:

"By the laws of Connecticut, the sexual intercourse of any man, with a married woman, is the crime of adultery in both."

The first thing to notice in this definition is the words "any man," which would include married or single men. And we also see that a man could only commit adultery with a "married woman," as single women are not included in the definition, and that is because the definition goes on to describe sexual intercourse with a single woman as fornication. And the last thing we see in the definition is that both the man and married woman were guilty of adultery.

This is in harmony with the definition we read in Strong’s, which was "Woman that breaketh wedlock." Of course this definition did not consider the status of the man, but a man’s status made no difference in determining who had committed adultery, since adultery was dependent upon the status of a woman -- not upon the status of a man. And if a married woman had sexual intercourse with any man, then both had committed adultery.

Adam Clarke, while he does not completely understand the issue, does state: "for it is the act of going to the bed of another man that constitutes the act and the crime." And while he correct as far as he goes, he should have made his statement more precise saying: a married woman going to the bed of another man that constitutes the act and the crime."

One more witness on this subject, this time by a man named John Gill, in his exposition of the Bible, concedes the following regarding the word adultery: "strictly speaking, [it] is only that sin which is committed with another man's wife."

In law we would say that when a man commits adultery it is a trespass on the rights of the married woman’s husband. And that being the case, then adultery causes an injustice to take place. It is an injustice because it violates the matrimonial right of the husband and also because it robs the husband by taking away the affection of his wife.

The translators were consistent in translating the Hebrew because the word was used 31 times and in all but one of those usages, the word was translated as a form of adultery. The one exception we find in Ezekiel 16:1-63, where the word was translated as "break wedlock." And again I will mention that "break wedlock"is the best possible translation of the Hebrew word.

Next we are going to look at the verse in Ezekiel 16:38. But first, verses 1-63, have to do with Jerusalem, and in verses 23-43, we are given the sins of Jerusalem and Jerusalem is compared with a whore, and then in verse 38 we read:

38 And I will judge thee, as women that ‘break wedlock’ and shed blood are judged; and I will give thee blood in fury and jealousy.

Again it is interesting that this is the only time out of 32 usages of the Hebrew word, that we find it translated as "break wedlock." And so, the translators must have understood the true meaning of the word, but preferred to use the Latin word which was more broad in its definition.

Something else of interest is the fact that the word "adultery" comes to us from the Latin language, not from the Hebrew or the Greek.

At this point in our study we have developed this definition of adultery: adultery is committed when any man (married or single) has a sexual relationship with a married woman. And next we need to see if this definition can be applied to Scripture, and to do that we are going to look at verses which contain the word adultery.

Our first verse is Leviticus 20:10 which actually gives us the penalty for those who commit adultery. It reads:

"And the man that committeth adultery (break wedlock) with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery (breaketh wedlock) with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death."

In analyzing this verse we see that when it mentions man, it says "the man" which would include married or single men. But when we look at the word woman we see that in both usages it refers to her as the wife of a man, or more correctly the woman of a man, or a man’s woman, which is in keeping with our definition.

The next verse we will look at is Jeremiah 29:23

"Because they have committed villany in Israel, and have committed adultery (breaketh wedlock) with their neighbours' wives, and have spoken lying words in my name, which I have not commanded them; even I know, and am a witness, saith the LORD."

The word "they" obviously refers to any man, and again we see that in order for adultery to be committed, it requires that the woman be married, and in this case the reference is to "their neighbors’ wives", or more correctly, "their neighbors’ women." And this verse is also in keeping with our definition.

The next verses we will look at are found in Ezekiel 16:30-32:

30 "How weak is thine heart, saith the Lord GOD, seeing thou doest all these things, the work of an imperious whorish woman;
31 "In that thou buildest thine eminent place in the head of every way, and makest thine high place in every street; and hast not been as an harlot, in that thou scornest hire;
32 "But as a wife that committeth adultery (breaketh wedlock), which taketh strangers instead of her husband!"

We have already looked at verse 28 and when we did, we saw that the subject of this chapter is the sins of Jerusalem, and in verse 28 we saw that Jerusalem was compared with a harlot or a whore. And in verses 30-32, the same thought is given us, except now, Jerusalem is described as being worse than a whore, because in verse 31, we see that Jerusalem is described as not being like a harlot because at least a harlot takes money for her services, but not so with Jerusalem as Jerusalem "scornest hire" and preferred instead to commit adultery by taking "strangers instead of her husband."

Even though what is said here refers to Jerusalem and other nations rather than actual people, the meaning is the same: for Jerusalem, a married woman, had relations with men other than her husband, and in doing so she committed adultery (breaketh wedlock).

In every one of these cases we have seen that it is always the martial status of the woman that determines when adultery is committed, and any time a married woman has sexual relations with a man other than her husband, she commits adultery, and so does the man, be the man married or single. There are other verses which I could give you which tell us the same thing, but this should be sufficient evidence to prove my position. We can search the scriptures from Genesis to Revelation and we will not find one verse where adultery is dependent upon the martial status of the man -- it is always the martial status of the woman. And nowhere will we find where adultery includes those cases in which a single woman has sexual relations with another woman’s husband.

But what about those cases? Well, in the case of any man who had a sexual relationship with an unmarried woman, it was not adultery, and it was treated differently, as death was not the penalty, but -- as we shall see – he did receive a life sentence. The law on this subject is given us in Deuteronomy 22:28-29:

28 If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found;
29 Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.

As I said, the penalty in these cases was a life sentence, since the man was required to take the unmarried woman as his wife, or as his woman, and he could never divorce her for any cause or reason -- he had to marry her because "he had humbled her." And again, it made no difference if the man was married or not, because if married, he simply became the husband to two women as, in those days, it was the custom and permissible to have more than one wife, and the word of God provided rules for men having multiple wives. But it was not permissible for a woman to have more than one husband.

Today people have a big problem understanding this law, but in those days it was the law of God and both parties understood the law and the consequences of their acts. And so, both the man and the unmarried woman knew that in having a sexual relationship, they were married, and that is just the way it was. The second woman is a wife in the eyes of God, because it is God's law that required men to take her as another wife.

At this point some of you may be saying to yourselves, well, what about what Jesus says about adultery in Matthew in the sermon on the mount? Well let’s look at what he said it is in Matthew 5:31-32:

31 It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away [0630]his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement:
32 But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away [0630] his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced [put away-0630] committeth adultery.

What Jesus said in verse 31, was basically a repeat of the law found in Deuteronomy 24, and we will look at that verse in just a minute. But then He says, "but I say unto you, that whosoever put away his wife except for the cause of ...", and so on. Do you notice something different in verse 32 than in verse 31? I hope so, because the "writing of divorcement is missing." Verse 31 was the law and verse 32 was a perversion of the law -- it was what the Pharisees were doing on a routine basis, and here Jesus condemns the act of putting away a wife without a bill of divorcement.

Before we continue I want to point out a glaring error in these verses with the two usages of the word "put away," once in verse 31 and once in verse 32, and also the word "divorced," which is used in verse 32. The error is that the same Greek word was used in all three cases, and it should not say divorced in verse 32 – it should also say "put away." The Greek word means "to set free," "to let go," "to dismiss," and "to send away," and other like words are also in the definition. The Greek word comes from two root words, one meaning "to separate" and the other "to loosen" or "to send away," giving us the meaning of to send away by separating.

In addition to that, the word divorce is a Latin, French, and Spanish word, but it is not a word found in the Greek or the Hebrew languages and the word should always be translated as "put away." It is also interesting that of the 77 usages of the word, it was only translated one time as divorced and of course, that is right here in Matthew 5:32. To us, divorced means not only separation but also having a divorce decree, whereas in the Greek, the word "put away" is only associated with the separation.

Again, I want you to notice that in verse 31, the law, and Jesus’ statement included two things: 1) a bill of divorcement, and 2) put away his wife. Why the mention of two things rather than just the process of divorcement or just the putting away? It was because that was what the law in Deuteronomy 24:1 commanded:

1 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.

Please notice the words "let him write her a bill of divorcement." The other requirement here is that he "send her out of his house" or as we read in Matthew he must put her away. What I want you to understand here is that to put her away and to send her out of his house are one and the same thing. But we also notice that the bill of divorcement must be given to her as that is her passport to marry again, because if she married without it, then she would be committing adultery (breaking wedlock).

Let us assume that a man got mad at his wife and simply put her away without giving her a bill of divorcement. Obviously, while she is separated from her husband, she is not divorced, she is still married, and the husband can take her back anytime he wants to. If she marries without the bill of divorcement, she commits adultery (breaks wedlock). It is also obvious that if a man put her away without a bill of divorcement, that being still married, if she remarried, both she and her new husband would be committing adultery (breaketh wedlock).

This also explains what Christ said in Matthew 19:9 when He said:

9 And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery (breaketh wedlock): and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery (breaketh wedlock).

The situation is the same, as in this case we see that while she was "put away," no bill of divorcement was issued, and therefore the woman was still married to her first husband and so, if she remarried, then both her and her new husband were guilty of adultery. Christ fulfilled the law when He said that a man who put away his wife and took another was himself guilty of adultery, unless he put her away for the cause of fornication. Now, we do not know what is meant here by fornication, but we do know that it was not adultery, because when a woman committed adultery (breaketh wedlock), she was not put away and given a bill of divorcement for adultery. No, she was put to death. Again the penalty for breaking wedlock was death – not being put away.

Now I want to look at the words "to put away" in a little more detail to show you that to put away is not the same as what we call divorce. In Matthew 1:18-19 we read:

18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.
19 Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a publick example, was minded to put her away privily.

The first thing we notice is that Joseph and Mary are not described to us here as being married, as their status is described to us in verse 18 as being "espoused." The Greek word used here and translated as "espoused" is Strong’s 3423, and it means "(2) to be promised in marriage, be betrothed." In other words, they are promised in marriage but they were not cohabiting nor having sexual relations, which means that they were not married.

In this case we are told that Joseph "was minded to put her away privily." Nothing mentioned here about a bill of divorcement is there? Well, according to God’s law, it was not necessary, because while they were espoused (engaged), they were not married and so their "being espoused" could simply be terminated.

Since the word "fornication"appears in the last verse we have looked at, I am going to look at that word also, because we all probably have a distorted view of what the word actually means. Just about everyone will tell you that the word means things like:

And many people will also use the word synonymously with adultery.

Well there are four Greek words which all come from the same root word used in the New Testament, and they are Strong’s 4202, 4203, 4204, and 4205, they have been translated as fornication, harlot, harlots, whore, whoremonger, committed, and as committed fornication.

Of the four words, 4205 is the root word and literally means "(1) a man who prostitutes his body to another's lust for hire." The Greek word is "pornos," and it was translated as fornication 3 times, fornications 2 times, as whoremonger 4 times, and as whoremongers 1 time. It is always used in Scripture as a noun referring to individuals such as we read in 1 Corinthians 5:9, where Paul writes for us:

9 I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators:

All forms of the word fornicate come to us from the Latin language and are not original to either the Hebrew or Greek. And so, the words "a male prostitute" would probably be a better translation.

4204 is the next word we need to look at and it is the Greek word "porne," which was used 12 times, and 8 of those times it was translated as harlot or harlots, and four times as whore. The Greek word is the feminine form of 4205 as it is defined as "(1) a woman who sells her body for sexual uses." It is also always used in Scripture as a noun referring to individuals such as we read of in Matthew 21:31-32:

31 "... Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you.
32 For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him.

The word "Harlot" is another word that is not in the Hebrew or Greek languages. It comes to us from the Welsh language and meant "lewd," and the word "whore" comes to us from the Welsh, Saxon, Danish, and German languages. In any event, the words "a female prostitute" would be a better translation.

The next word should be Strong’s 4203, but I am going to look at 4202 first because 4203 gives me a transition into the Old testament understanding of the word and I want to cover that subject last.

Strong’s 4202, is the Greek word "porneia," which was used 26 times and it was always translated in the plural as "fornications." The Greek word is defined in my concordance as just about any illicit sexual act you can think of, even though it comes from the same root word as the other words we are considering. And since the word refers to the act rather than the person, it is always used in Scripture in the sense of a verb. It refers to the act of fornication or to the act of playing the harlot such as we read of in Matthew 5:32:

32 But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery (breaketh wedlock): and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced [put away] committeth adultery [breaketh wedlock].

But I am not happy with the definition of 4202, because, as we have seen, if a married woman had sexual relations with anyone other than her husband, then she committed adultery, and the penalty was death. And there is no way that anyone is going to convince me that Jesus was changing the penalty from death to putting away.

This brings us to 4203, and it is the Greek word "porne," which was used 8 times and it was translated either as "committed" or "committed fornication," and the latter is the correct rendering. The Greek word is defined in my concordance as: "(1) to prostitute one's body to the lust of another." The word is unusual, as it only appears in 1 Corinthians and in Revelations. It is also always used in Scripture as a verb as it refers to the act of fornication or to playing the harlot such as we read of in 1 Corinthians 10:8:

8 Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed [fornication], and fell in one day three and twenty thousand.

Unfortunately none of what we have seen really gives us any examples of what fornication really was, as all we have is definitions out of concordances, which, in this case, is not much to go on. What we need is an actual example that would tell us what activity constituted fornication, and we have been given such an example here in 1 Corinthians 10:8.

What Paul is referring to here is the matter of Baal-Peor and the counsel Balaam gave to Balak back in Numbers. In Numbers 25:1 we read that Israel was encamped in Shittem which was on the high steppes of Moab, and while they were camped there the people began to commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab, and this whoredom is specifically told to us as joining themselves together in sexual activity.

The problem for Balak was that he could not get Balaam to curse Israel, but we find that Israel had no problems accepting the invitations of the daughters of Moab. However we are not told how this came to pass until chapter 31, where it states:

15 And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive?
16 Behold, these [daughters of Moab] caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD. Numbers 31:15-16

So in chapter 25 we are led to believe that this whoredom was the result of the daughters of Moab luring the Israelite men, however we now learn that the Moabites had received "the counsel of Balaam," which when acted upon, led the children of Israel into committing fornication with the daughters of Moab.

We know this is true, not only from what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 10:8, but also from Revelation 2:14 which states:

14 But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication.

It does not even matter if these unions between Israel and the daughters of Moab were matrimonial unions, because they were illegal unions for an Israelite, as no marriage between a Midianite and an Israelite could be legitimate because it corrupted the Holy seed of Israel and was what we would call today being unequally yoked.

In fact Adam Clarke writes on this matter:

"The joining of Baal-peor mentioned here, was probably what Paul had in view when he said, 2 Corinthians 6:14: ‘Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.’ And this joining, though done even in a matrimonial way, was fornication as no marriage between an Israelite and a Midianite could be legitimate, according to the law of God."

Of course, the church today defines "unequally yoked" as a relationship between a Christian and a non-Christian, but, but if we apply the unequally yoked doctrine to the days of Balaam, it was more than that -- it was a relationship between an Israelite and anyone from a nation other than Israel. And of course there are two reasons for this: one being the results we see in the story of Balaam where the Moabite women eventually led the Israelite men into idolatry. But first and foremost, such relations corrupted the Holy seed of Israel, and God had not just warned, but had ordered Israel not to marry outsiders.

"... The condition of these two persons plainly proves it to have been a matrimonial alliance... Therefore I must conclude that the fornication of whoredom, in the common sense of the word was not practiced on this occasion. The matter was bad enough, as the marriage was in flat opposition to the law of God; and we need not make it worse by representing the woman as a common prostitute, as the Vulgate and several other have done. In such a case this is absolutely inadmissible."

I will interrupt the quote here to explain that the reason Clarke says these were marriages is because the woman involved, we are told in verse 15, "was the daughter of Zur, he was a head over people, and of a chief house in Midian." And in verse 18, he is called a "prince of Midian." And so she was the daughter of a prince -- not some common prostitute. Getting back to my quote of Clarke, he continues saying:

"Josephus positively says that Zimri had married Cozbi, (Antiq 1. Iv., cap 6) and if he had not said so, still the thing is nearly self-evident."

This being the case we are not talking about promiscuous sexual relations, although there may have been some. But, in this specific case, as a minimum, we are talking about normal matrimonial duties between husband and wife, and there is no adultery here, at least as we normally understand the meaning of the word. This only leaves the crime of a marriage between an Israelite and a non-Israelite.

Again this is the only positive example that we have which we can cross reference from the NT to the OT, and in this situation, the crime of fornication was an Israelite being unequally yoked in marriage to an alien, to someone who was not an Israelite. I am not trying to apply what happened here to Matthew, 5:32, as all I am saying is that this is the only positive use of the word "fornication" that we can trace back to the OT and determine its real meaning. And again it referred to interracial marriages.

I also came across an interesting comment on the actions of Balaam in Zondervan’s Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible which says of Balaam:

"His teaching involved the most contemptible action ever conceived in an unregenerate heart. Corrupt a people you cannot curse and God will have to chasten them. In short, this means to take a people under divine blessing and deliberately lead them into sin to strip them of their divine blessing."

And so, what’s new? We have been witnesses to the same thing for all of our lives.