Matthew 19:3-9

Living Bible

³ Some Pharisees came to interview him and tried to trap him into saying something that would ruin him.

“Do you permit divorce?” they asked.

⁴ “Don’t you read the Scriptures?” he replied. “In them it is written that at the beginning God created man and woman, ^5-6 and that a man should leave his father and mother, and be forever united to his wife. The two shall become one—no longer two, but one! And no man may divorce what God has joined together.”

⁷ “Then, why,” they asked, “did Moses say a man may divorce his wife by merely writing her a letter of dismissal?”

⁸ Jesus replied, “Moses did that in recognition of your hard and evil hearts, but it was not what God had originally intended. ⁹ And I tell you this, that anyone who divorces his wife, except for fornication, and marries another, commits adultery.”^[a]