What Does Mark 10:7 Mean?
For this cause a human will leave his father and mother, and cling to his wife;
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 cleave to his wife;THE KEY
Marriage is pictured as both leaving one bond and adhering to another, so the new union becomes a center of belonging.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks of a bond formed through movement away from the parental household and toward a wife. The new attachment changes where a person’s closest belonging is centered.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that marriage is merely an added relationship that leaves the order of belonging untouched.
THE ROOT
προσκολληθήσεται
proskollēthēsetai
GROWS FROM
κολλάω
kollaō
To glue or join closely.
“cling” in this verse is proskollēthēsetai. The verb carries the image of adhesion: cleaving is a joining that binds, not simply an inward feeling. Its other uses show that the force of the word lies in the bond itself and what becomes joined.
ALSO GROWS
kollaō: Glue or join.
κολλάω
This is the verb’s basic form, revealing the adhesive sense beneath “cleave.”
kollōmenos: Being joined.
κολλώμενος
In 1 Corinthians 6:16 the same verb describes a person joined to a prostitute and becoming one body, showing the binding force of the word without making every bond equivalent.
καταλείψει
kataleipsei
GROWS FROM
λείπω
leipō
To leave, be absent, or lack.
“leave” in this verse is kataleipsei. The verse pairs departure with adhesion: leaving one household makes room for a new center of belonging. The wider verb family also uses this root for what is lacking, giving departure the sense of a real change in presence and relation.
ALSO GROWS
kataleipō: Leave behind.
καταλείπω
This compound is the form used here, naming the departure that accompanies the new bond.
leipō: Lack or be short of.
λείπω
Luke 18:22 uses this verb for what the rich ruler still lacks; the shared root links leaving with an absence that changes what remains.
THE PATTERN
A bond takes shape through leaving one attachment and joining another, and that joining creates real unity.
Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother, and clings to his wife, and they 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.For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cling to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh.THE THREAD
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 word translated “joined” comes from the same Greek verb family as “cleave” here. That shared root reveals the force of the image: joining binds, and the nature of the bond matters.
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