Torah · The beginning
Text 05 / 08 · The beginning
What Genesis says, and what we infer from it
Leningrad Codex1008 CEMasoretic tradition
Illustrative artifact · does not contain this passage
Genesis describes a man leaving his parents, holding fast to his wife, and the two becoming one flesh. Jesus and Paul both return to these words. The question is whether they define each marriage or also establish that no husband may form another.
עַל־כֵּן יַעֲזׇב־אִישׁ אֶת־אָבִיו וְאֶת־אִמּוֹ וְדָבַק בְּאִשְׁתּוֹ וְהָיוּ לְבָשָׂר אֶחָד׃
transliteration
al-ken ya'azov-ish et-aviv ve'et-immo, vedavaq be'ishto, vehayu levasar echad.
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
A close literal rendering.
Jesus and Paul both return to this sentence. It gives us a man, a woman, a leaving, a holding fast, and one flesh. The Greek form they quote also says “the two.” I am not disputing any of that. The question is what follows: does the passage describe the bond formed by these two people, or does it also set the maximum number of marriages a man may have?
A closer look at the important words
Open any term to see its range and where else Scripture uses it.
- and cleave · To cling, to hold fast: covenant loyalty language, used of Israel cleaving to the Lord.
- one flesh · Echad is the ordinary Hebrew numeral “one.” What the one thing consists of is supplied by context, not by the word. Here it names the union the man and the woman become.
What does “the two” establish?
The Hebrew of Genesis 2:24 reads “and they shall become one flesh.” The Greek of the Septuagint reads hoi duo, “the two shall become one flesh,” and that is the form Jesus quotes in Matthew 19:5 and Mark 10:8, and the form Paul quotes in Ephesians 5:31. The Samaritan Pentateuch, the Peshitta, and the Vulgate carry the same numeral.
That gives the traditional reading a serious point. The wording Jesus and Paul quote says two. When Jesus reaches back to creation and says the two become one flesh, the number is present in the sentence, not imported from nowhere.
I do not answer by pretending the number is absent. I read “the two” as the two people whose union the verse is describing. The traditional reading hears more: because creation presents one man and one woman and Jesus returns to that beginning, the pair is also the exclusive form of marriage. Grammar alone cannot choose between those conclusions.
Does singular grammar create a numerical rule?
Genesis says “a man” and “his wife” in the singular. Deuteronomy 21:15 uses the same singular man when it says, “if a man has two wives.” Singular grammar naturally describes the people in the scene; it does not settle the wider legal question by itself.1
The creation story gives us one man and one woman. The traditional argument is stronger than a grammatical count. Jesus appeals to this beginning when correcting divorce, Paul quotes it when teaching husbands and wives, and New Testament marriage instructions are consistently written in pairs. Together those facts support an exclusive reading. The question is whether that inference can also account for the laws and narratives that recognize more than one wife.
Why you may reach a different conclusion
The traditional reading makes a cumulative case from creation and its later use:
God makes one woman for the first man. The Greek says the two become one flesh. Jesus goes behind Mosaic divorce law to this beginning, and Paul repeatedly addresses a husband and a wife. On this reading, the whole canonical movement presents an exclusive pair, even if no verse adds the sentence “and he may have no other wife.”
Why I reach a different conclusion
I agree that the case must be weighed cumulatively. I read Genesis as defining what happens when a man and a woman marry, while leaving the question of another marriage to passages that address it more directly. Exodus 21 and Deuteronomy 21 recognize women and children inside plural households as wives and lawful heirs. Jesus quotes Genesis while answering a question about divorce and the permanence of the bond, which is examined on its own page. We agree that creation matters, but disagree about whether the pair in that first union also excludes every additional union.
What I think this passage establishes
Genesis 2:24 establishes a real union between a man and a woman, and the Greek wording Jesus and Paul quote names the two who become one flesh. Whether that sentence also limits a husband to one such union is a canonical inference, not a question the numeral can answer on its own. I conclude that Genesis defines the bond it describes without, by itself, setting a maximum number of marriages. That conclusion still has to survive the way Jesus and Paul use the passage.
1note
Paul quotes this verse in Greek and applies the one-flesh mystery to Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:31–32). That application gives a marriage its moral model, but the many members of the church cannot be turned into a count of wives. The household page keeps those two questions separate.
Open the sources
- Sefaria · Genesis 2:24 ↗ · The Masoretic Hebrew with English alongside; the Hebrew shown here comes from this text.
- Bible Hub interlinear · Genesis 2:24 ↗ · A word-by-word parsing with Strong's numbers for checking the terms used here.
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The next passage is Matthew 19:3–9 · Mark 10:2–12. The Pharisees ask whether a man may divorce his wife for any cause. Jesus takes them back to creation and gives a demanding answer. The question is whether his answer also establishes a marriage limit they did not ask about.