⁵ If a man has recently married, he must not be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him. For one year he is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife he has married.^(A)

⁷ Has anyone become pledged to a woman and not married her? Let him go home, or he may die in battle and someone else marry her.^(A)”

⁴ Then they can urge the younger women^(A) to love their husbands and children, ⁵ to be self-controlled^(B) and pure, to be busy at home,^(C) to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands,^(D) so that no one will malign the word of God.^(E)

²⁴ That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united^(A) to his wife, and they become one flesh.^(B)

⁶ “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’^{[a](A) 7} ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,^{[b] 8} and the two will become one flesh.’^[c](B) So they are no longer two, but one flesh. ⁹ Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

⁴ “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’^{[a](A) 5} and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’^[b]?^{(B) 6} So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

⁹ Enjoy life with your wife,^(A) whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun—all your meaningless days. For this is your lot^(B) in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun.

²⁸ In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives^(A) as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—