²⁴ Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.^(A)

³ Some Pharisees came to him, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?”^{(A) 4} He answered, “Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’^{(B) 5} and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?^{(C) 6} So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” ⁷ They said to him, “Why then did Moses command us to give a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her?”^{(D) 8} He said to them, “It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. ⁹ And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”^[a](E)

²⁸ In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ For no one ever hates his own flesh, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, ³⁰ because we are members of his body.^{[a](A) 31} “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”^(B)

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 mother and be joined to his wife,^{[a](B) 8} and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh.^{(C) 9} Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

¹⁰ Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. ¹¹ He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her,^{(D) 12} and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

² Thus a married woman is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives, but if her husband dies, she is discharged from the law concerning the husband.^(A)