The Phrase
"What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder" (Matthew 19:6, KJV) is among the most legally and liturgically significant sentences in the English language. It appears in Christian wedding ceremonies across denominations worldwide and shaped both canon law and civil law's treatment of marriage for centuries.
Biblical Origin
The context is a dispute with the Pharisees about divorce (Matthew 19:1-12). They ask whether it is lawful to divorce a wife for any reason. Jesus responds by pointing to Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 - God created male and female, and "for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." His conclusion: "So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate."
The argument is a reversion from Moses's permissive divorce legislation (Deuteronomy 24:1-4, which Jesus attributes to "the hardness of your hearts") to the creational intent of Genesis. The phrase asserts that marriage is not merely a human contract that parties can dissolve but a divine act that creates a new unity - "one flesh" - that has a reality independent of the parties' wishes.
The parallel in Mark 10:9 uses identical language, and the phrase has been part of the Christian wedding rite since the earliest liturgical records.
Semantic Drift
The phrase "what God has joined together, let no one separate" is simultaneously a liturgical formula and a legal principle. Its presence in the marriage ceremony has made it familiar to virtually everyone in the English-speaking world who has attended a Christian wedding - which is a very large number of people. The phrase has structured Western Christian marriage theology, shaped Catholic canon law's understanding of marriage as an indissoluble sacrament, and influenced civil law's historical reluctance to permit divorce.
In contemporary secular usage, the phrase is often quoted (sometimes with irony) in discussions of divorce, separation, and the dissolution of partnerships. "What God has joined together" is sometimes invoked about non-marital unions - business partnerships, political alliances, or cultural combinations - to describe something whose dissolution would be unnatural or wrong.
Cultural Presence
The phrase appears in countless novels and films depicting weddings or divorce proceedings. It has been the subject of intense legal and theological controversy - the Catholic Church's insistence on the indissolubility of sacramental marriage rests heavily on this text. Its continued presence in wedding ceremonies ensures that it reaches new audiences at every generation, making it one of the most consistently repeated sentences in English-speaking religious culture.