What Does the Bible Say About Divorcing?

1 Corinthians 7:15 ESV / 7 helpful votes

But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace.

1 Corinthians 3:11-17 ESV / 7 helpful votes

For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. ...

Luke 16:18 ESV / 7 helpful votes

“Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.

Matthew 19:9 ESV / 7 helpful votes

And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”

Matthew 5:32 ESV / 7 helpful votes

But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Matthew 5:17-46 ESV / 5 helpful votes

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ ...

Revelation 7:4-8 ESV / 4 helpful votes

And I heard the number of the sealed, 144,000, sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel: 12,000 from the tribe of Judah were sealed, 12,000 from the tribe of Reuben, 12,000 from the tribe of Gad, 12,000 from the tribe of Asher, 12,000 from the tribe of Naphtali, 12,000 from the tribe of Manasseh, 12,000 from the tribe of Simeon, 12,000 from the tribe of Levi, 12,000 from the tribe of Issachar, 12,000 from the tribe of Zebulun, 12,000 from the tribe of Joseph, 12,000 from the tribe of Benjamin were sealed.

1 John 5:7 ESV / 4 helpful votes

For there are three that testify:

1 John 1:9 ESV / 4 helpful votes

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Hebrews 13:4 ESV / 4 helpful votes

Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.

Hebrews 6:4-6 ESV / 4 helpful votes

For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt.

2 Timothy 3:16 ESV / 4 helpful votes

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,

1 Timothy 5:8 ESV / 4 helpful votes

But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

1 Timothy 3:2 ESV / 4 helpful votes

Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach,

Colossians 3:1-25 ESV / 4 helpful votes

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. ...

Ephesians 5:22-33 ESV / 4 helpful votes

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, ...

Ephesians 5:21 ESV / 4 helpful votes

Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Ephesians 5:5 ESV / 4 helpful votes

For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.

Ephesians 4:32 ESV / 4 helpful votes

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

Galatians 5:22-23 ESV / 4 helpful votes

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV / 4 helpful votes

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

1 Corinthians 7:1-40 ESV / 4 helpful votes

Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. ...

1 Corinthians 6:16 ESV / 4 helpful votes

Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.”

Romans 7:2-3 ESV / 4 helpful votes

For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.

Romans 6:1-23 ESV / 4 helpful votes

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. ...

Acts 9:7 ESV / 4 helpful votes

The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one.

Acts 8:1-40 ESV / 4 helpful votes

And Saul approved of his execution. And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him. But Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison. Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word. Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ. ...

Acts 2:38 ESV / 4 helpful votes

And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

John 15:13 ESV / 4 helpful votes

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

Luke 14:26 ESV / 4 helpful votes

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

Mark 10:2-12 ESV / 4 helpful votes

And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ...

Mark 6:17 ESV / 4 helpful votes

For it was Herod who had sent and seized John and bound him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, because he had married her.

Matthew 19:1-30 ESV / 4 helpful votes

Now when Jesus had finished these sayings, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. And large crowds followed him, and he healed them there. And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? ...

Malachi 2:14-16 ESV / 4 helpful votes

But you say, “Why does he not?” Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth. “For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the Lord, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless.”

Deuteronomy 24:1-22 ESV / 4 helpful votes

“When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house, and if she goes and becomes another man's wife, and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies, who took her to be his wife, then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the Lord. And you shall not bring sin upon the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance. “When a man is newly married, he shall not go out with the army or be liable for any other public duty. He shall be free at home one year to be happy with his wife whom he has taken. ...

Deuteronomy 21:15 ESV / 3 helpful votes

“If a man has two wives, the one loved and the other unloved, and both the loved and the unloved have borne him children, and if the firstborn son belongs to the unloved,

Exodus 21:1-36 ESV / 3 helpful votes

“Now these are the rules that you shall set before them. When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing. If he comes in single, he shall go out single; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out alone. But if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’ ...

Genesis 6:1-22 ESV / 3 helpful votes

When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. ...

Genesis 5:2 ESV / 3 helpful votes

Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created.

Genesis 3:16 ESV / 3 helpful votes

To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.”

Genesis 2:24 ESV / 3 helpful votes

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Genesis 1:26-28 ESV / 3 helpful votes

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

42 Bible Verses about Divorcing

1 Corinthians 7:15 ESV / 7 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

1 Corinthians 3:11-17 ESV / 7 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Luke 16:18 ESV / 7 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Matthew 19:9 ESV / 7 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Matthew 5:32 ESV / 7 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Matthew 5:17-46 ESV / 5 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Revelation 7:4-8 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

1 John 5:7 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

1 John 1:9 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Hebrews 13:4 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Hebrews 6:4-6 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

2 Timothy 3:16 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

1 Timothy 5:8 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

1 Timothy 3:2 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Colossians 3:1-25 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Ephesians 5:22-33 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Ephesians 5:21 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Ephesians 5:5 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Ephesians 4:32 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Galatians 5:22-23 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

1 Corinthians 7:1-40 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

1 Corinthians 6:16 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Romans 7:2-3 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Romans 6:1-23 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Acts 9:7 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Acts 8:1-40 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Acts 2:38 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

John 15:13 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Luke 14:26 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Mark 10:2-12 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Mark 6:17 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Matthew 19:1-30 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Malachi 2:14-16 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Deuteronomy 24:1-22 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Deuteronomy 21:15 ESV / 3 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Exodus 21:1-36 ESV / 3 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Genesis 6:1-22 ESV / 3 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Genesis 5:2 ESV / 3 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Genesis 3:16 ESV / 3 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Genesis 2:24 ESV / 3 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Genesis 1:26-28 ESV / 3 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Suggest a Verse

Enter a Verse Reference (e.g., John 3:16-17)