So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”
6. What God therefore hath joined. By this sentence Christ restrains the caprice of husbands, that they may not, by divorcing their wives, burst asunder the sacred knot. And as he declares that it is not in the power of the husband to dissolve the marriage, so likewise he forbids all others to confirm by their authority unlawful divorces; for the magistrate abuses his power...
Wherefore they are no more twain,.... They were two before marriage, but now no more so; not but that they remain two distinct persons, but one flesh; or, as the Syriac, Arabic, Persic, and Ethiopic versions read, "one body": hence the wife is to beloved by the husband as his own body, as himself, as his own flesh, Eph 5:28.
Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. (e) Has made them yokefellows, as the marriage itself is called a yoke, by a borrowed kind of speech.