Bible Strands
Matthew 19:4
Jesus answered, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Jesus answers Pharisees who have tested Him with a question about the lawfulness of divorce (Matthew 19:3). He redirects their legal question back to the creation account.
The words — ἀναγιγνώσκω (anagnōskō) means "to read again" or "to read with recognition," not merely to scan. The aorist form ἀνέγνωτε carries the force of "surely you have already recognized this."
The thread — Jesus quotes Genesis 1:27 ("male and female He created them") and immediately follows with Genesis 2:24 in verse 5. The same phrase appears in Genesis 5:2, tying the creation narrative together.
Why it lands — Jesus refuses to answer the divorce question on legal terms and instead grounds the issue in the Creator's original design. The reader is asked to see marriage as an act of God, not a human arrangement subject to negotiation.
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
And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,
Cross-references
- Genesis 2:23 And the man said: “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for out of man she was taken.”
- 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.
- Genesis 5:2 Male and female He created them, and He blessed them. And in the day they were created, He called them “man.”
- Luke 10:26 “What is written in the Law?” Jesus replied. “How do you read it?”
- Malachi 2:15 Has not the LORD made them one, having a portion of the Spirit? And why one? Because He seeks godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit and do not break faith with the wife of your youth.
- Genesis 2:18 The LORD God also said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make for him a suitable helper.”
- Matthew 22:31 But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what God said to you:
- Matthew 21:42 Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures: ‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?
- Mark 12:10 Have you never read this Scripture: ‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.
- Mark 12:26 But concerning the dead rising, have you not read about the burning bush in the Book of Moses, how God told him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?