Bible Strands
Hebrews 13:4
Marriage should be honored by all and the marriage bed kept undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The anonymous author of Hebrews writes to a Jewish-Christian community under pressure to revert to Judaism, placing this instruction in the closing exhortation (ch. 13) between calls to remember prisoners and to reject greed.
The words — Timios (τιμῖος) means "honorable, precious, worthy of honor," the same root as the verb "to honor" (τιμάω). Koitē (κοίτη) is the specific word for the marital bed or sexual union, more concrete than gamos (marriage).
The thread — Genesis 2:24 establishes the one-flesh union as the design; Proverbs 5:15 and 1 Corinthians 7:2 both frame sexual fidelity within one's own spouse as the normative boundary.
Why it lands — It is a command with a stated consequence: God will judge those who break the boundary. It asks the reader to treat marital fidelity not as a preference but as a matter of divine accountability.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Greek words
King James Version
Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.
Cross-references
- Genesis 2:24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
- Proverbs 5:15 Drink water from your own cistern, and running water from your own well.
- 1 Corinthians 7:2 But because there is so much sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.
- Galatians 5:19 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery;
- Genesis 1:27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
- 1 Corinthians 6:9 Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who submit to or perform homosexual acts,
- Galatians 5:21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
- 1 Corinthians 5:13 God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked man from among you.”
- Colossians 3:5 Put to death, therefore, the components of your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry.
- Ephesians 5:5 For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure, or greedy person (that is, an idolater) has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.