What Does Mark 10:12 Mean?
And if a woman sends away her husband and is married to another, she 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
And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery.THE KEY
The Greek verb translated “put away” means release or dismiss, yet this verse says that the dismissal does not erase the bond’s claim on what comes next.
THE MEANING
This verse addresses a woman who dismisses her husband and marries another: it calls that adultery. The dismissal is real, but the verse does not treat it as erasing the marriage bond that bears on the next union.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that initiating a separation makes the next marriage unrelated to the previous bond.
THE ROOT
ἀπολύσασα
apolýsasa
GROWS FROM
λύω (lýō), compounded with ἀπό (apó)
λύω means to loosen or release; ἀπολύω means to release, dismiss, or send away.
“put away” in this verse is apolýsasa. The Greek verb depicts an act of release or dismissal. The sentence places that act beside a second marriage and names its consequence as adultery: release describes the separation, but does not itself declare what follows unbound.
ALSO GROWS
lýō: to loosen, release
λύω
This base verb keeps “put away” tied to the concrete act of letting go.
apólysis: release, dismissal
ἀπόλυσις
This related noun names the same kind of release; the verse’s next words show the consequence attached to this dismissal.
THE PATTERN
The act of separation does not erase the bond’s claim on what follows.
Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother, and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.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.But if she does put space between, let her remain unmarried, or return to her husband. And let the husband not let go of his wife.THE THREAD
And he said to them, Whoever sends away his wife and marries another commits adultery against her.The paired saying uses the same Greek release verb, ἀπολύω (apolýō, release or dismiss), and adultery verb, μοιχάομαι (moicháomai, commit adultery). The phrase “against her” makes explicit the bond affected when the husband dismisses his wife; this verse names the reciprocal case.
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