What Does Matthew 19:5 Mean?
For this cause a man leaves father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two become 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 said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?THE KEY
“Cleave” is an adhesive word: the verse presents marriage as a joining that forms one embodied life.
THE MEANING
This verse names a shift in kinship: a man leaves his parents’ household and joins himself to his wife. The joining is more than closeness; it makes the two one embodied life. The question places the weight of that bond before the reader now.
THE ROOT
προσκολληθήσεται
proskollēthēsetai
GROWS FROM
κολλάω
kolláō
To glue, join, or attach closely.
The verb behind “cleave” carries the sense of adhesive joining, with holding force. Its use for sexual joining in 1 Corinthians 6:16 makes the verse’s “one flesh” concrete: the union is embodied, not merely emotional.
ALSO GROWS
kollṓmenos: A person who joins or attaches himself.
κολλώμενος
In 1 Corinthians 6:16 this form describes one joined to another, followed by the words “one body”; it makes the embodied force of this root visible.
kollâsthai: To attach oneself to someone or something.
κολλᾶσθαι
Acts 5:13 uses this form for joining oneself to others, showing the same root’s sense of close attachment.
THE PATTERN
When two people are joined, scripture describes the bond as a shared embodied reality that reorders prior ties.
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.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 Greek verb translated “joined” is another form of the verb behind “cleave” in Matthew. Paul uses it to describe a sexual joining as “one body,” then quotes the same one-flesh line, exposing the embodied force of the word.
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