What Does Matthew 19:3 Mean?
The separated ones also came near to him, testing him, and said to him, Is it lawful for a man to send his wife away for every cause?
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
The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?THE KEY
The question tests whether release can be made limitless: whether a man may send his wife away for every cause.
THE MEANING
Here, release is placed under scrutiny: can a husband dismiss his wife for any cause at all? “For every cause” stretches permission toward an unlimited rule, making the scope of release the point at issue. The verse speaks wherever a reason is treated as enough simply because it can be named.
THE ROOT
ἀπολῦσαι
apolysai
GROWS FROM
λύω (λυ-)
Loosen, untie, release.
The verb here is ἀπολῦσαι, an infinitive of ἀπολύω: to release, dismiss, or send away. Its root λύω means to loosen, while ἀπό adds the sense of away; the question presses whether any cause can serve as grounds for that release.
ALSO GROWS
lysis: Loosening, release, or dissolution.
λύσις
This noun carries the root’s basic image of something being loosened, revealing the concrete action inside “put away.”
apólysis: Dismissal or release.
ἀπόλυσις
This related noun makes the sense of sending away explicit and echoes the act the question asks to permit.
THE PATTERN
Scripture places the sending away of a spouse beside its grounds and consequences, rather than treating it as unbounded permission.
When a man takes a wife and marries her, and if she finds no favor in his eyes, because he finds some nakedness in her, then he writes her a writ of cutting away, places it in her hand, and sends her out of his house.And I say to you, Whoever sends away his wife, except for fornication, and takes another, commits adultery, and whoever takes her who has been sent away commits adultery.THE THREAD
Master, now you let your servant go in wholeness, according to your word.Simeon uses the same verb, ἀπολύω, when he says the Lord now lets him depart in peace. The shared root reveals the sense of release inside “put away”; here, the surrounding words describe a peaceful departure.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us