What Does Luke 16:18 Mean?
Everyone who sends away his wife and takes another commits adultery, and whoever takes her who has been sent away from a husband commits adultery.
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
Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery.THE KEY
Here, being sent away does not erase the consequence named for the next marriage.
THE MEANING
A spouse is dismissed and another marriage begins, yet the dismissal does not make that new union morally weightless. The verse also names the woman as one who has been put away, and says that marrying her is adultery.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A dismissal by itself makes a later marriage free of the first relationship’s consequences.
THE ROOT
ἀπολύων
apolyōn
GROWS FROM
λύω (lyō), with the prefix ἀπό- (apo-)
To loosen, release, or dismiss; ἀπολύω means to release or send away.
“sends away” in this verse is apolyōn. The Greek repeats ἀπολύω: first one person dismisses his wife, then the woman is described as having been dismissed. The verb carries the sense of release, yet the verse says that this release does not erase the adultery attached to the next marriage.
ALSO GROWS
apolelymenēn: Having been released or dismissed.
ἀπολελυμένην
This is the same verb in the second clause, marking the woman by the act done to her.
lyō: To loose, untie, or unbind.
λύω
The root’s sense of loosening appears in the KJV phrase “Loose him, and let him go” (John 11:44), opening the physical sense beneath “put away.”
THE PATTERN
A spouse’s dismissal does not, by itself, erase the relational consequences of a subsequent union.
But I say to you, whoever sends away his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery. And whoever marries the one who was sent away commits adultery.So then, if while her husband lives she is married to another man, she will be called an adulteress. But if the husband has died, she is free from that instruction, so that she is no adulteress, though she is married to another man.THE THREAD
When Jesus saw her, he called her to him and said to her, "Woman, you have been unbound from your weakness."Luke uses the same Greek verb, ἀπολύω (apolyō), for the woman “loosed” from her infirmity that appears here as “putteth away.” The shared verb carries the sense of release in both verses, while context gives that release its force.
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