What Does Mark 10:9 Mean?
What therefore God has yoked together, let no human pull apart.
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
What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.THE KEY
The hidden image is a yoke: God binds two lives into a shared bond rather than merely placing them side by side.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks of union as God’s act of yoking two lives into a shared bond, and human separation as the tearing apart of that bond. It addresses the reader now: the relationship carries meaning beyond the momentary will of either person alone.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that a bond’s meaning is only a private arrangement, freely disposable without consequence.
THE ROOT
συνέζευξεν
synezeuxen
GROWS FROM
ζευγ-
zeug-
To yoke or pair together.
“yoked together” in this verse is synezeuxen. The Greek verb combines συν- (syn-, together) with the language of yoking and pairing. “Joined” carries the image of two lives bound into a shared connection, with God named as the one who establishes it.
ALSO GROWS
zeugos: A pair or team.
ζεῦγος
This branch keeps the sense of two made into a pair, rather than two merely standing beside one another.
syzygos: A yokefellow or partner.
σύζυγος
The word carries the same image into a person who shares a bond with another.
THE PATTERN
A bond that becomes a shared life carries strength through its joining, and separation breaks that shared whole.
Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother, and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.And if one overpowers him, two will stand against him, and a threefold cord is not quickly torn.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
So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What God has yoked together, let no one pull apart.Matthew uses the same Greek verb, συνέζευξεν (synezeuxen), from ζευγ- (zeug-, yoke or pair). Its opening clause names the result as “one flesh,” making explicit the shared whole that Mark’s verse says human hands can pull apart.
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