4. Rule of Grammatical Structure
a. This rule says that in the Greek language, classical or vulgar, and sometimes in English, the placement of a word in the sentence doesn’t altar the meaning that it donates to that sentence. So, as a result, one phrase of a sentence that may not seem to apply to the rest of the sentence, actually does. This will make more sense later when we look at what we call "exception clauses". In his book entitled The Case For Christ, Lee Strobel quotes Bruce M. Metzger, PH.D. as stating about the Bible’s accuracy, "..sometimes the scribe’s memory would play tricks on him. Between the time it took for him to look at the text and then to write down the words, the order of the words might get shifted. He may write down the right words, but in the wrong sequence. This is nothing to be alarmed at because the Greek, unlike English, is an inflected language.... Meaning it makes a whale of a difference in English if you say, "Dog bites man", or "Man bites dog".- Sequence matters in English. But in Greek it doesn’t. One word functions as the subject of the sentence regardless of where it stands in the sequence. Consequently, the meaning of the sentence isn’t distorted if the words are what we consider to be out of the right order"(64).
II. Matthew 5:31-32:
A. Verse 31: Here Jesus is going through a huge list of doctrines that the Jews had heard for years and years. They were doctrines taught to them by sects such as the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Herodians, various rabbis and priests. So then, Jesus is saying, "This is what you have heard forever about what the law is supposed to mean when it says so and so, but I say to you, that that is not what the law was meant to say at all." So then, Jesus was attacking the doctrine of the scribes and Pharisees and other doctors of the law. He was reinterpreting the law the way that it was originally supposed to be interpreted, after all, He wrote it! He was correcting their doctrine, but never did Jesus ever change the law, he only reinterpreted the law to show forth the meaning it was to convey from the beginning. The issue here was that the doctors of the law had taught that there was no reason for not getting divorced, but rather if you wanted one for any reason at all, then give the woman a writing of divorce, and you are free from the obligation. This will make much more sense as we study the Writing of Divorcement.
In the Old Testament, even up until the time that Jesus lived, the Jews were divorcing for every reason under the sun. Men were allowed to exercise polygamy. Men owned their wives. Jesus, however, was correcting these misinterpretations of the law by teaching the law the way it was supposed to be interpreted. By referring to Genesis, He corrected polygamy to one man and one wife, he showed the equality of man and wife before the fall, He showed God’s heart all along for the man and woman, and he also provided for divorce in verse 32.
The Law had been corrupted and was carried out in a double-standard. So this is why Jesus attacked the doctrine of the Scribes and Pharisees. He did not tell us to beware of the Scribes and Pharisees, He told us to beware of the LEAVEN, or doctrine of the Scribes and Pharisees. A good example of this is the adultress that was caught in the very act of adultery. They brought the woman, but where was the man? The man was never stoned in Jewish times. It was a double standard. The man was never punished. So then they were hypocritical not only in the interpretation of the law, but also in the