Matthew 19:5

Matthew 19:5. And said (Genesis 2:24). Either said by Adam before the fall, and here cited as said by God through Adam as the representative of the race, or by Moses, and cited as an inspired utterance.

For this cause. Comp. Ephesians 5:31, where the passage is applied also to Christ and the Church. God says, Christ says, that the relationship between a man and his wife is closer, higher, and stronger, than even that between children and parents. Notice: it is the man who leaves his parents.

The twain shall become one flesh. ‘Unity of soul and spirit,' is not mentioned. The absence of it, however great a source of unhappiness, is not a ground of divorce. The essential bond is the fact that the twain, by marriage, ‘became one flesh,' one man within the limits of their united life in the flesh, for this world. The one cause of divorce (Matthew 19:9) is incompatible with the unity as ‘one flesh.'