⁵ But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of hearts [your callousness and insensitivity toward your wives and the ^[a]provision of God] he wrote you this precept. ⁶ But from the beginning of creation God made them male and female.^{(A) 7} For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother [to establish a home with his wife],^{(B) 8} and the two shall become one flesh; so that they are no longer two, but [are united as] one flesh.^{(C) 9} Therefore, what God has united and joined together, man must not separate [by divorce].”