Mark 10:1-16

J.B. Phillips New Testament

The divine purpose in marriage

10 ^1-2 Then he got up and left Galilee and went off to the borders of Judea and beyond the Jordan. Again great crowds assembled to meet him, and again, according to his custom, he taught them. Then some Pharisees arrived to ask him this test-question. “Is it right for a man to divorce his wife?”

³ Jesus replied by asking them, “What has Moses commanded you to do?”

⁴ “Moses allows men to write a divorce-notice and then to dismiss her,” they said.

^5-9 “Moses gave you that commandment,” returned Jesus, “because you know so little of the meaning of love. But from the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female’. ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’. So that in body they are no longer two people but one. That is why man must never separate what God has joined together.”

¹⁰ On reaching the house, his disciples questioned him again about this matter.

^11-12 “Any man who divorces his wife and marries another woman,” he told them, “commits adultery against his wife. And if she herself divorces her husband and marries someone else, she commits adultery.”

He welcomes small children

^13-16 Then some people came to him bringing little children for him to touch. The disciples tried to discourage them. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant and told them, “You must let little children come to me—never stop them! For the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Indeed, I assure you that the man who does not accept the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” Then he took the children in his arms and laid his hands on them and blessed them.