james, actually Jesus referred to this divorce provision in the Law when he said this, making a change in the Jewish viewpoint of divorce.
(Matthew 5:31-32) 31 "Moreover it was said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ 32 However, I say to YOU that everyone divorcing his wife, except on account of fornication, makes her a subject for adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
(Matthew 19:3-10) 3 And Pharisees came up to him, intent on tempting him and saying: "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife on every sort of ground?" 4 In reply he said: "Did YOU not read that he who created them from [the] beginning made them male and female 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and will stick to his wife, and the two will be one flesh’? 6 So that they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has yoked together let no man put apart." 7 They said to him: "Why, then, did Moses prescribe giving a certificate of dismissal and divorcing her?" 8 He said to them: "Moses, out of regard for YOUR hardheartedness, made the concession to YOU of divorcing YOUR wives, but such has not been the case from [the] beginning. 9 I say to YOU that whoever divorces his wife, except on the ground of fornication, and marries another commits adultery." 10 The disciples said to him: "If such is the situation of a man with his wife, it is not advisable to marry."
As to forgiveness of a unfaithful wife/concubine, notice in this case a Levite priest had forgiven his concubine but then later when certain Israelites wanted to attack him while visiting another Israelite, he offered her to the crowd, and she was gang raped until she died. Then he cut her up into 12 pieces and spread her over the land
(Judges 19:1-3) . . .Now it happened in those days that there was no king in Israel. And it came about that a certain Levite was residing for a time in the remotest parts of the mountainous region of E´phra·im. In time he took as his wife a concubine from Beth´le·hem in Judah. 2 And his concubine began to commit fornication against him. Finally she went away from him to the house of her father at Beth´le·hem in Judah and continued there fully four months. 3 Then her husband got up and went after her to speak consolingly to her so as to bring her back; . . .
(Judges 19:22-24) 22 While they were making their hearts feel good, look! the men of the city, mere good-for-nothing men, surrounded the house, shoving one another against the door; and they kept saying to the old man, the owner of the house: "Bring out the man that came into your house, that we may have intercourse with him." 23 At that the owner of the house went on out to them and said to them: "No, my brothers, do not do anything wrong, please, since this man has come into my house. Do not commit this disgraceful folly. 24 Here are my virgin daughter and his concubine. Let me bring them out, please, and YOU rape them and do to them what is good in YOUR eyes. But to this man YOU must not do this disgraceful, foolish thing."
How does the WTS "justify" this?
*** w56 10/1 p. 596 Marriage Obligations and Divorce ***
The forgiveness of a guilty mate calls to mind the prophet Hosea, whom Jehovah instructed to take his adulterous wife back and who obediently did so. (Hos. 1:3-6; 3:1, 2) Long before that, in the days of Israel’s judges, an unnamed Levite journeyed a distance and took his adulterous concubine back, but not to prostitute her. At the Benjaminite city of Gibeah he turned her loose to the mob that stormed the house where he was lodging. But he did not put her at the mob’s mercy because he failed to love her. He did so only to prevent his sacred office as a Levite from being profaned by forced sodomy or effeminacy. He did not approve of the mob’s violation of his wife or concubine. Indignantly he made it an issue that he put before the whole nation of Israel. He provoked the shocked eleven tribes of Israel to punish the guilty city and the tribe of Benjamin by a war that almost brought the wiping out of the guilty tribe. This vindicated the other eleven brother tribes as being upholders of the purity of the nation.—Judges, chapters 19 and 20.
Yes, you can forgive a spouse but still offer her up to be gang raped.
Blondie