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Genesis 2:24

(24) Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
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This is the "leave and cleave" verse regarding godly marriage. Notice that Moses begins the verse with "therefore," which signals a concluding statement. In other words, a man leaves his parents and cleaves to his new wife "because she was taken out of Man" (verse 23). The marriage union, then, works to restore the unity—the oneness—of humanity; the man is incomplete without the woman, and the woman, without the man. Together, they are whole.

"Cleave" is a word we do not use very often. It is a strange word, as it has come down to us through the centuries with two diametrically opposite meanings! These meanings descended from two similarly sounding Old English (Anglo-Saxon) words, cleofan and cleofian, the former meaning "to cut asunder, split," and the latter meaning "to stick fast, adhere." Obviously, the meaning that is correct in this passage is "to stick fast, adhere," as the Hebrew word under it, dabaq, means "cling, adhere to." Modern translations render this Hebrew word as "be joined to," "cling to," "hold fast to," "unite with," "bond with," and even "stick with." In every case, it suggests that the couple are "stuck like glue" to each other.

In our house, there is a table in our living room where our children do their homeschool work, and around it are some Windsor chairs. A few years ago, my son, Jarod, had a bad habit of rocking back on one of these chairs, and he rocked on it so much that the back of the chair broke completely off, creating a stool. Not wanting to throw the chair away, I decided to repair it. While inspecting the break, I was interested to see that the chair broke above the glued joint. The glued joint remained solidly connected to the seat of the chair. It stuck, adhered, or clung to the seat of the chair while the rest of the back broke off.

This simple illustration helps us to see what God means in Genesis 2:24. When a man and his wife are joined together—when they cleave to one another—the joint should be stronger than anything else. The joint between a married couple is to be so strong that, if trouble visits the marriage, the union will survive. If a break comes, one of the spouses should "break" but not the joint; that is, one or the other should submit rather than break the bond. That is God's overall intention for the marriage union.

This is the first indication in the Bible that God intends marriage to be one man and one woman for life.

— Richard T. Ritenbaugh

To learn more, see:
Marriage—A God-Plane Relationship (Part Six)