The average human today is so far from the biblical ideal of what a human being should be, that it might be hard to understand why this is even a rule. You want everyone to be happy happy, right? You don't want people to stay in unhappy marriages, right? Why is this a rule?
In order to understand WHY this is a Commandment from G-d, which it entirely is, you first have to understand something. You have to understand that our society's idea of what a human being is supposed to be, and G-d's idea of what a human being is supposed to be, are entirely different. They are profoundly different, like day and night.
When G-d first engages with the Israelites, He does so though a covenant. This is not like a legal contract in our society, although people back then made those sorts of covenants too. This is like one person saying to another, "I have your back no matter what. I will defend you from harm. I will die to keep you safe." It is a very serious thing, and taken very seriously. Not to be entered into lightly. Nevertheless, the Israelites broke their covenant with G-d within 2 months of making it. Honestly they probably broke it the minute Moses had his back turned. That's how people are, and honestly our society's idea of a human being is much more comfortable to that nature.
That is not G-d's ideal of a human being though. That divine conception of what a human being should be like, is honorable. The word of such a man can be relied on, in so far as it is humanly within his power to fulfill. He keeps his covenant.
Secondly, the reason why such a man makes the covenant to begin with, whether it is the marriage covenant or a covenant with G-d, is love. As I have repeated throughout this series, we are not talking about an emotion, or not merely one anyway. If all you have to bind you to a prospective spouse is emotion, don't marry them because you are building your house on a foundation of weakness. True love is a deep awareness of communion, based in G-d. I spoke of this in reference to the command to love your neighbor: the awareness is that really, you ARE your neighbor. You and your neighbor, assuming you are united in the love of G-d, are equal. They are your brother or sister, or actually, given how siblings are these days, they are more than that. The holy understanding of a man in community is that no one is privileged nor can they treat themselves or other people as privileged. All are alike children of G-d. Emotion can facilitate or break down this equality, this union under G-d, but the actuality is the thing we should be aware of. Not what we feel about it. If we have the right awareness, feeling will follow. Feeling must follow knowledge or it is feeling astray.
The man of G-d loves G-d with all his emotions, but also he knows the reality, that his communion with G-d is his life and falling from that would be death. Maybe his body wouldn't die straight away, but his life would fail. The light and energy and life that pours down upon him from heaven would cease.
So love is not merely what you feel. It's what you know, what you understand. It is in fact more that than a feeling.
The holiest prayer in Judaism, the Shema, can be understood three different ways and all are true:
Hear O Israel, the Lord your G-d, the Lord Alone.
(This means, there is no other deity. Do not bow down to idols.)
Hear O Israel, the Lord your G-d, the Lord is Unity.
(The Lord brings all together in communion and harmony in Him.)
Hear O Israel, the Lord your G-d, the Lord is One.
(There is one G-d and He is singular and unique. Sorry Christians, there is no Trinity, nor was the man Jesus ever G-d. Jesus indeed broke many of the commandments of G-d and encouraged others to do the same. Jesus and the prophet Jeremiah cannot both be right about the importance of the Sabbath for instance: Jeremiah is expressing the biblically correct view.)
The second one, "the Lord is Unity," means that the Lord brings all under Him into right relation and harmony under His Law. His law is meant to set you free, not enslave you; it is meant for your good not your harm. When we are subject to our own disordered desires and passions, we are not free, we are bound.
The TL:DR version of what I am saying is this: the divine conception of what a human should be is honorable and loyal (keeps his covenants, does not betray,) loving in the sense of understanding the true basis of love, and of course united in the love of G-d without which all human thoughts, feelings desires and actions go astray.
How does adultery fit in? Well first of all you are breaking your marriage covenant. There was someone to whom you promised your whole self, your whole loyalty, and you broke your promise. You were not honorable.
Secondly, assuming you don't tell your spouse you are banging someone else, you are not truthful.
Now people have all sorts of open relationships these days, which are an abomination, but it is possible that such is the case in which your marriage is not a marriage at all but a convenient mutual cohabitation. So you could say you didn't break your promise because you didn't make one. Such sexual immorality is still loathsome to G-d and is still adultery and such people are covetous of multiple other bodies which is a violation of the 10th Commandment.
Such a person has not love, in the divine sense. They may well have the emotion of love, but not the true thing, because the true thing is based on an awareness not a feeling.
Now, I have told you what G-d's idea of what a human should be is. Let me tell you about what our society's idea of a human being is.
A human being, according to society, is a being seeking pleasures and experiences. They may seek other things like knowledge or wealth, but ultimately it is to this end. Everyone has a written or unwritten "bucket list" (so much evil in such an innocuous seeming phrase) of experiences that they want to fill out before they can't and are old or dead. Someone who had been a childhood friend expressed it this way: they want to slide into the grave with a margarita in their hand screaming, "what a ride!" This is the godless conception of what a human being is. That person regrettably is no longer my friend since I took exception to what she said. She didn't like that.
It might seem strange to think that people who seek so much pleasure often have so little happiness. I have used this example in a previous post: there was a man, famous on television, who had EVERYTHING. He was rich. He ate the best food on the planet, orgies of taste were at his beck and call. He was adored. He traveled the world. He was in an open relationship with a sexy woman, but he could have had thousands.
He killed himself. Now the vox populi would say, he had a disease. Well there's an awful lot of it going around, isn't there? Wonder why?
There was another man. Let me tell you about him. It's not a story to be proud of, but it is one to be glad of.
Growing up, in his early adulthood, he wasn't starving or dying of disease. He was fortunate in that respect; he was moderately comfortable, though not because of his own efforts. He failed at everything he laid his hand to. He was constantly short of money, though fortunately he was at least thrifty with what he had. He drank, he did drugs. He watched porn, the disgusting abuse of young bodies for sexual perversion. It is a hateful thing. His young life was a prison sentence, marking time. He understood this. This alone will I mark to his credit: he knew.
Ultimately, in desperation, he understood. His life and the lives of everyone in the whole world were futile, without one thing. One thing he did not believe in. One thing without which, everything was for naught and all the suffering and tears of this whole big world were for nothing. ONE thing, upon which the soul and fate of the whole of existence hung.
And that thing that he at first did not believe in, opened a whole new world for him. By the grace, mercy and love of the Lord YHWH alone to a miserable wretch, he began to understand. He is still in the process of understanding. Something opened to him that his young self would not have believed. Knowledge. Vigor. Strength. Joy. He was more than merely happy, he had joy. Thank you Lord. Thank you for everything.
So yeah, that was me. Someone who should have been miserable, and was. Now, I am blessed, though no credit goes to myself. All praise to Lord G-d alone.
Alright, well I have strayed from my main point significantly. Adultery is covetous and dishonorable, and against G-d's Commandment, don't do it.
In the Tanakh, G-d often portrays Israel's disobedience and double-heartedness in terms of adultery. It is not that those who fear G-d are married to Him, it's actually more than that.
This is Ezekiel 16, speaking of G-d's people Israel:
"On the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths. No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised.
Then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood, and as you lay there in your blood I said to you, “Live!” I made you grow like a plant of the field. You grew and developed and entered puberty. Your breasts had formed and your hair had grown, yet you were stark naked.
Later I passed by, and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your naked body. I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine.
I bathed you with water and washed the blood from you and put ointments on you. I clothed you with an embroidered dress and put sandals of fine leather on you. I dressed you in fine linen and covered you with costly garments. I adorned you with jewelry: I put bracelets on your arms and a necklace around your neck, and I put a ring on your nose, earrings on your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. So you were adorned with gold and silver; your clothes were of fine linen and costly fabric and embroidered cloth. Your food was honey, olive oil and the finest flour. You became very beautiful and rose to be a queen. And your fame spread among the nations on account of your beauty, because the splendor I had given you made your beauty perfect, declares the Sovereign Lord.
But you trusted in your beauty and used your fame to become a prostitute."
~Ezekiel 16:4-15
I highly recommend that you read the entire passage, it is quite illuminating. So yeah, you can figure that the Lord G-d does not look tolerantly upon adultery of any form, marital or spiritual.
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