Matthew 19:1–9

Teaching about Divorce

¹⁹When Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan.^{* 2}Large crowds followed him, and he cured them there.^*

³Some Pharisees came to him, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?”^{* 4}He answered, “Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’^{* 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’?^{* 6}So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” ⁷They said to him, “Why then did Moses command us to give a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her?”^{* 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. ⁹And 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.”^d*