What Does Ephesians 5:31 Mean?
For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cling to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh.
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
For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.THE KEY
The word translated “joined” pictures two lives glued fast into one shared flesh.
THE MEANING
This verse names a reordering of kinship: a man leaves the bond of father and mother and joins his wife. The word translated “joined” carries the sense of adhering or being glued fast, and that attachment is described as two becoming one flesh, a shared embodied life.
THE ROOT
προσκολληθήσεται
proskollēthēsetai
GROWS FROM
κολλάω
kollaō
To glue, stick, or adhere; with πρός (pros), to join closely to.
“cling” in this verse is proskollēthēsetai. The Greek makes “joined” more tactile than a loose association: it is the language of sticking fast. The verse connects that adhesion with two becoming one flesh, so unity is pictured as a shared embodied bond.
ALSO GROWS
kollaō: To glue, stick, or join.
κολλάω
This is the verb’s seed sense: the union carries the image of attachment.
proskollaō: To adhere or join closely to.
προσκολλάω
This is the compound verb used here, applying the image of adhesion to the bond between husband and wife.
kollōmenos: Joining or attaching oneself.
κολλώμενος
The same verb family appears in 1 Corinthians 6:16, where joining another is described as becoming one body.
THE PATTERN
Where two bodies are joined, Scripture describes their union as one flesh.
Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother, and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.For this cause a man leaves father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two become one flesh.Or have you not seen that the one glued to a seller of bodies is one body? For, he says, the two will be one flesh.THE THREAD
Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother, and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.Ephesians uses the same Greek joining verb as the Septuagint’s rendering of Genesis 2:24, where the Hebrew is דָּבַק (dāvaq, “cling fast”). The shared image is adhesion: two are joined into one flesh.
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