This post continues my series on Jesus, divorce, and remarriage, where I examine Jesus’ words with a focus on this question: Did Jesus believe that marriage is indissoluble? Here are my posts so far:
Jesus on Divorce and Remarriage: Introduction (JDR-1)
Hyper-Literalism, Could vs. Should, and a Guiding Question (JDR-2)
“Cleave” Does Not Imply an Unbreakable Bond (JDR-3)
“One Flesh” Does Not Imply an Unbreakable Bond (JDR-4)
Summary of this post: I argue that “what therefore God has joined together” in Matthew 19:6 does not indicate that marriage is an indissoluble bond. Neither the definition nor the grammatical form of the verb “has joined” indicate permanence. Further, the word “therefore” shows that Jesus is summarizing what he already said about God’s design for a man to “cleave” to his wife and become “one flesh” with her. Since neither of those terms indicate permanence, neither does Jesus’ summarizing statement “what… God has joined together.”
Introduction: “What God Joins, Man Cannot Unjoin”?
When Jesus responded to the Pharisees’ question about divorce, he began by quoting and explaining Genesis 1:27 and 2:24. We don’t have to guess what point he wanted to make from these passages, for he immediately continued with a pointed command: “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matt. 19:6).
I’ll discuss the command clause (“let not man separate”) in my next post, but first I want to discuss the opening clause of Jesus’ statement: “What therefore God has joined together.” There are several ways that some Bible readers use this clause to argue that marriage is indissoluble.
First, some people use this clause to draw distinctions between unions that God joins and unions not united by God. In this thinking, only validly-contracted marriages are joined by God. Some Bible teachers then assert that unions joined by God are indissoluble in a way that other unions are not. As one Facebook meme I saw shouted: “WHAT GOD JOINS, MAN CANNOT UN-JOIN!”
What sort of unions are joined by God? Some people emphasize that God joins only unions between believers, so that unions between unbelievers or “mixed marriages” of believers and unbelievers are less binding or permanent. This view has been fairly common throughout church history. It is addressed most directly by Paul in 1 Corinthians 7, so I won’t discuss it more here.[1]
A more common view among conservative Christians I know is that the only sort of marriage that God joins is one which is a first marriage for both partners. According to this view, only such a marriage is a validly-contracted marriage, and a validly-contracted marriage cannot be broken in God’s eyes.
Second, grammatical arguments have also been used to assert that “What… God has joined together” refers to an inseparable bond. For example, Laney claimed the following:
The term for “joined together” means “yoked together,” and the aorist tense points to the permanence of the bond… A good paraphrase of verse 9 would read, “Stop severing marriage unions which God has permanently bound together.”[2]
None of these arguments withstand scrutiny, however, when we look closely at Jesus’ grammar and flow of thought.
The Grammar and Meaning of “Joined Together”
Let’s begin with Laney’s grammatical claim. Unfortunately, he did not demonstrate a good understanding of the Greek aorist verb tense. Rodney Decker, in his introductory Greek grammar, notes that the aorist “can often be represented in English with a simple tense, usually a simple past.”[3] Further, it gives no indication about how long an action takes place or how long it lasts:
The aorist simply refers to a situation in summary without indicating anything further about the action… It describes a complete situation, referring to it as a whole without commenting on whether or not it involves a process.[4]
That Laney was wrong is almost embarrassingly evident based on a simple scan of this verb tense elsewhere in the NT. One example just to prove the point: At the beginning of this same chapter we read that Jesus “entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan” (Matt. 19:1). The verb “entered” here is in the aorist tense, yet obviously Jesus did not remain permanently in this region. Neither can we conclude from the aorist tense of “joined” that a husband and wife are “permanently bound together.”
What about the meaning of the word “joined”? The Greek verb translated “has joined together” (συζεύγνυμι) is found in the NT only in this account (Matt. 19:6; Mark 10:9). It is used once in the Greek OT (LXX), in Ezekiel 1:11, where it translates a Hebrew word that simply means “to unite,” with no indication of permanence.[5]
The Greek verb συζεύγνυμι is a compound word formed from prefix σύν (“with” ) and the noun ζεῦγος. This noun is used in the NT to refer to a “pair” of turtledoves (Lk. 2:24) and a “yoke” of oxen (Lk. 14:19), both of which can be separated. A related verb (ἑτεροζυγέω, “to unite unequally”) is used in 2 Corinthians 6:14 in the warning, “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers.” Such unequal yokes can be separated, however, for God instructs his people to “go out from their midst, and be separate from them” (2 Cor. 6:17).
Laney’s arguments, then, both fall flat.
The Flow of Jesus’ Thought
Equally significantly, the context of Jesus’ statement does not suggest that he was meaning to distinguish between marriages joined by God and marriages not joined by God. Are we really to imagine Jesus was thinking, “What God has joined together—but only the marriages he has joined together, not the others!—let not man separate”? Nothing in the context of Jesus’ debate with the Pharisees suggests that this thought was in his mind.
It is crucial not to miss the word “therefore” in the clause “What therefore God has joined together.” This word shows that Jesus is drawing on what came before. He is referring back to what he just said as he quoted from Genesis.[6]
“What… God has joined together,” then, is Jesus’ way of referring back to God’s creation of “male and female” (Gen. 1:27). In other words, Jesus is not referring to God joining each individual couple at the time of their wedding, when they exchange vows. Rather, the joining that Jesus is referring to is something God did at creation, when he made male and female and designed for a man to “hold fast” to his wife and for the two to become “one flesh” (Gen. 2:24).
In previous posts I argued that neither “hold fast” nor “one flesh” carry the idea that marriage cannot be dissolved. If this is so, then there is no reason to believe that Jesus’ statement summarizing these realities (“What therefore God has joined together”) indicates marriage is indissoluble, either.
Conclusion: “God Has Joined Together” Does Not Imply Permanence
In Matthew 19:4-6, then, Jesus is drawing principles from creation that are true of marriage in general. Yes, he will later emphasize that some who divorce and marry another are actually committing adultery (Matt. 19:9), raising questions about how God is involved in such unions and what should happen to such marriages. (I plan to address this verse in due time.) But Jesus’ initial point here is more basic: Man should not separate what God, by his creation design of male and female, has joined.
In short, then, the clause “what God… has joined together” simply indicates that something has been united and gives no suggestion that this unity cannot be broken. Those who claim otherwise are using bad grammar or missing the flow of Jesus’ thought, and are importing ideas not actually stated in the text.
Thank you for reading! Your responses, as always, are welcome. In my next post, I plan to pause to take a more general look at Genesis 2:24, which has been foundational for everything Jesus has said so far in Matthew 19. Does this verse imply marriage is an unbreakable bond?
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[1] This view raises a host of interpretive challenges I will not try to address here. For example, it is indeed true that God seems to have higher expectations for marriages between believers than for mixed marriages (compare 1 Cor. 7:10-11 with 1 Cor. 7:12-16). But that probably has less to do with anything about marriage being indissoluble than about the higher expectations God places on believers for living together in peace. A careful discussion of that passage will have to wait for another time.
[2] J. Carl Laney, The Divorce Myth: A Biblical Examination of Divorce and Remarriage (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 1981), p. 56.
[3] Rodney J. Decker, Reading Koine Greek: An Introduction and Integrated Workbook (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2014), p. 120.
[4] Decker, ibid., p. 272.
[5] In Ezekiel 1:11 each living creature in Ezekiel’s vision is described as having two wings that are “adjoined to” the wings of its neighboring creature (NETS, A New English Translation of the Septuagint, International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies, Inc. {New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007}, 948, https://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/nets/edition/38-iezekiel-nets.pdf). The ESV says the wings “touched” each other, and the underlying Hebrew word is used of curtains “coupled” with clasps (Ex. 26:6), trade partnerships (2 Chron. 20:35), temporary military alliances (Dan. 11:6), and persons currently “joined with all the living” who know they will die (Eccl. 9:4-5).
[6] This also means that we should not look ahead in the passage to determine what Jesus meant by “what… God has joined together.” For example, some might assert that Jesus was thinking of what he was going to say about some marriages being adulterous (Matt. 19:9), but this is contradicted by Jesus’ use of the connecting word “therefore” (οὖν), which points backward, not forward.
