1. AND [Jesus] left there [Capernaum] and went to the region of Judea and beyond [east of] the Jordan; and crowds [constantly] gathered around Him again, and as was His custom, He began to teach them again.
2. And some Pharisees came up, and, in order to test Him and try to find a weakness in Him, asked, Is it lawful for a man to dismiss and repudiate and divorce his wife?
3. He answered them, What did Moses command you?
4. They replied, Moses allowed a man to write a bill of divorce and to put her away. [Deut. 24:1-4.]
5. But Jesus said to them, Because of your hardness of heart [your condition of insensibility to the call of God] he wrote you this precept in your Law.
6. But from the beginning of creation God made them male and female. [Gen. 1:27; 5:2.]
7. For this reason a man shall leave [behind] his father and his mother and be joined to his wife and cleave closely to her permanently,