What Does 1 Corinthians 7:10 Mean?
To the married I command, yet not I but the Lord. Let the wife not put space between herself and her husband.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband:THE KEY
“Depart” is the same Greek verb Jesus uses for “put asunder,” so the verse names leaving as the separation of a joined bond.
THE MEANING
For the married reader now, the charge is direct: the wife is not to depart from her husband. The verse gives this command the Lord’s authority, not merely the speaker’s private judgment.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that this instruction is only the speaker’s personal opinion: the verse explicitly says, “not I, but the Lord.”
THE ROOT
χωρισθῆναι
chōristhēnai
GROWS FROM
χωριζ-
chōriz-
To separate, divide, or put apart.
“put space between” in this verse is chōristhēnai. English renders this verb “depart” here and “put asunder” in Matthew 19:6. The shared Greek verb lets both phrases show the same action: separation from a joined bond.
ALSO GROWS
chōrismós: separation; the state or act of being apart
χωρισμός
This noun carries the same root into the name of separation itself, making explicit what “depart” does to the bond.
achōristos: inseparable; not separated
ἀχώριστος
The negative form uses the same root to name a bond that cannot be put apart, bringing the root’s opposite into view.
THE PATTERN
Scripture treats union as a bond whose integrity is measured by what can, and cannot, separate it.
Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother, and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What God has yoked together, let no one pull apart.Who will separate us from the love of the Anointed One? Will pressure, or the narrow place, or pursuit, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?THE THREAD
So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What God has yoked together, let no one pull apart.The Greek verb translated “depart” here is the same verb rendered “put asunder” there. The shared word makes the connection clear: the wife’s departing is named with the same language as separating what has been joined.
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