It was because of the hardness of your hearts that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives. In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus is approached by some Pharisees who are out to trap him. They present him with an issue that places him between a rock and a hard place. It was a carefully thought out scheme that they thought would catch Jesus unawares and expose him as a fraud. The question was presented by the Pharisees in a manner that was meant to make Jesus contradict himself no matter his response. And Jesus didn't disappoint them either. He went along with their act, albeit with an aim of correcting them.
“Yes, it is wrong to divorce your wife,” he tells them, “ for from the beginning, God created male and female so that they can enter into marriage.” However, Jesus response didn’t appear convincing at all. “ If that is the case,” they interject, “ then why did Moses- the greatest lawgiver- permit divorce?” As they watched and waited to see how Jesus was going to get himself out of this, Jesus did not hesitate to give them an answer: “ Moses allowed you to do so because of the hardness of your hearts.” And I think it is herein that the gist of today's teaching lies.
The hardness of the hearts of the sons and daughters of Israel had estranged them from God and from God's commandments. Because of the hardness of their hearts, they did not see in God’s commandments a path to fullness of life. Because of the hardness of their hearts, they regarded God’s commandments as God interfering with their freedom. Moreover, they saw the commandments of God as imposed from without and as such extraneous. They did not see themselves as having been created within God’s commandments. It was thus easy for them to circumvent God’s law in order to accommodate their own teachings.