15 Bible Verses About Marriage

Genesis 2:24

“That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.”

Reflection: The verse follows the making of the woman from the man’s rib and the man’s words, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23). Earlier in the chapter God had said, “It is not good for the man to be alone” (2:18). The verse opens “That is why,” tying the man’s leaving his parents and uniting with his wife to the woman having been taken from him. Both Jesus (Matthew 19:5) and Paul (Ephesians 5:31) quote it.

Matthew 19:6

“So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Reflection: Pharisees asked Jesus whether a man may divorce his wife “for any and every reason” (Matthew 19:3). He answered by joining two lines of Genesis, “made them male and female” (1:27) and the one-flesh verse (2:24), and then drew this conclusion. When they raised the certificate of divorce Moses allowed, he said Moses permitted it “because your hearts were hard,” and in verse 9 he names an exception for sexual immorality. Mark 10:9 records the same saying.

Proverbs 18:22

“He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the Lord.”

Reflection: The proverb puts finding a wife and receiving favour from the Lord in the same line. Proverbs 19:14 also traces a good wife to the Lord, and sets her against what parents can pass on: “Houses and wealth are inherited from parents, but a prudent wife is from the Lord.”

Proverbs 31:10-11

“A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies. Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value.”

Reflection: These lines open the poem that ends the book of Proverbs. The next verse adds, “She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life” (31:12). At the close, her children call her blessed and her husband praises her, and verse 30 names what earns the praise: “a woman who fears the Lord.”

Ecclesiastes 9:9

“Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun—all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun.”

Reflection: The advice sits between “eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart” (9:7) and “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might” (9:10). Within a life this verse twice calls meaningless, a wife to enjoy is named as part of the lot God has given.

Ephesians 5:25

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”

Reflection: Paul’s household instructions follow “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (5:21). Wives are told, “submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church” (5:22-23). Husbands are told to love their wives as Christ loved the church, giving himself up for her “to make her holy” (5:26), and to love them “as their own bodies” (5:28). The section ends with both duties in one sentence: each husband “must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband” (5:33).

1 Peter 3:1-2

“Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives.”

Reflection: “In the same way” points back to the instructions of chapter 2, which ask slaves to submit to masters, “not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh” (2:18). Peter addresses all wives, and names one case within the instruction: husbands who “do not believe the word,” who may be won over without words by their wives’ conduct. The following verses prefer “a gentle and quiet spirit” (3:4) to elaborate hairstyles, gold jewelry and fine clothes.

1 Peter 3:7

“Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.”

Reflection: The husband’s instruction also opens “in the same way.” Peter calls the wife “the weaker partner” and, in the same sentence, an heir with her husband “of the gracious gift of life.” The verse ties the husband’s treatment of his wife to his own prayers: he is to live considerately with her “so that nothing will hinder your prayers.”

1 Corinthians 7:3-4

“The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife.”

Reflection: Paul is answering a letter from Corinth, and the NIV prints part of verse 1 as a quotation from it: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” Paul replies that each husband and wife should have sexual relations with each other, and he states the yielding of authority over one’s body in both directions, wife to husband and husband to wife. Verse 5 allows them to abstain only “by mutual consent and for a time” for prayer.

Hebrews 13:4

“Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.”

Reflection: The verse sits in a list of closing instructions: keep loving one another, show hospitality, remember prisoners (13:1-3), and in verse 5, keep free from the love of money. Honour for marriage is asked of “all,” and the marriage bed is named alongside it, with a warning that God will judge adultery.

Proverbs 5:18-19

“May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth. A loving doe, a graceful deer— may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be intoxicated with her love.”

Reflection: A father speaks to his son in a chapter that warns against adultery. The picture begins in verse 15, “Drink water from your own cistern,” and the streams are to be “yours alone, never to be shared with strangers” (5:17). Verse 20 then asks, “Why, my son, be intoxicated with another man’s wife?”

Matthew 5:28

“But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

Reflection: Jesus quotes the commandment “You shall not commit adultery” and carries it from the act to the look. The verses that follow speak of gouging out an eye and cutting off a hand rather than going into hell, and verses 31-32 turn to divorce.

Malachi 2:16

“’The man who hates and divorces his wife,’ says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘does violence to the one he should protect,’ says the Lord Almighty. So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful.”

Reflection: Malachi addresses people who flood the Lord’s altar with tears because God no longer accepts their offerings. The reason given is that “the Lord is the witness between you and the wife of your youth” (2:14), whom they have betrayed, though she is “the wife of your marriage covenant.” Translations differ over this verse: the NIV makes the man who hates and divorces his wife the subject, while the King James Version has God speaking of himself: “he hateth putting away.”

1 Corinthians 7:10-11

“To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife.”

Reflection: Paul marks this as a command from the Lord rather than his own, and it agrees with Jesus’ words in Mark 10:11-12, which give no exception. In the next verses he speaks on his own authority (“I, not the Lord”) to believers married to unbelievers: they must not divorce a spouse who is willing to stay, but “if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so” (7:15).

1 Corinthians 7:39

“A woman is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to marry anyone she wishes, but he must belong to the Lord.”

Reflection: Near the end of the same chapter Paul turns to widows. The bond lasts for the husband’s lifetime; after his death the widow may marry whom she chooses, with one condition: “he must belong to the Lord.”