What Does Mark 10:8 Mean?
And the two will be one flesh, so they are no longer two, but 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
And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.THE KEY
The verse reveals that the union of two is not only inward: it is named as one shared flesh.
THE MEANING
When two are joined, their union is spoken of as one flesh: an embodied bond, not only an inward feeling. The two are counted as one in this bond.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that a union is only a private feeling or public status: the verse names it as embodied joining.
THE ROOT
σάρκα
sarka
GROWS FROM
σαρκ- (sark-), the stem of σάρξ (sarx)
Flesh: bodily substance and, by extension, embodied human life.
English can make “flesh” sound like mere physical matter, but σάρξ (sarx) can name embodied human life. Calling two people one flesh makes the bond bodily and lived, not merely a feeling.
ALSO GROWS
sarkinos: made of flesh
σάρκινος
This branch keeps the word tied to bodily substance, so “one flesh” names more than an agreement or sentiment.
sarkikos: fleshly; characterized by flesh
σαρκικός
The same stem reaches into lived human existence, showing that “flesh” can name more than skin alone.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names the joining of two as an embodied bond.
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.Paul uses the same Greek flesh-word and the same “two ... one flesh” formula when speaking of joining a harlot. That connection shows the bodily force of the phrase: it names what the joining does, even where the act itself is rejected.
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