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Some Pharisees came to him in order to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man[a] to divorce his wife for any reason?”

He answered them, “Haven’t you read that the one who made[b] them at the beginning ‘made them male and female’[c] and said, ‘That is why a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?[d] So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, man must never separate.”

They asked him, “Why, then, did Moses order us ‘to give a certificate of divorce and divorce her’?”[e]

He told them, “It was because of your hardness of heart that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives. But from the beginning it was not this way. I tell you that whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”[f]

10 His disciples asked him, “If that is the relationship of a man with his wife, it’s not worth getting married!”

11 “Not everyone can accept this saying,” he replied, “except those to whom celibacy[g] has been granted, 12 because some men are celibate from birth,[h] while some are celibate because they have been made that way by others. Still others are celibate because they have made themselves that way for the sake of the kingdom from[i] heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.”

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Footnotes

  1. Matthew 19:3 Other mss. lack for a man
  2. Matthew 19:4 Other mss. read created
  3. Matthew 19:4 Cf. Gen 1:27; 5:2
  4. Matthew 19:5 Cf. Gen 2:24
  5. Matthew 19:7 Cf. Deut 24:1, 3
  6. Matthew 19:9 Other mss. read adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery
  7. Matthew 19:11 Lit. it
  8. Matthew 19:12 Lit. from the mother’s womb
  9. Matthew 19:12 Lit. of