He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.
In this passage, a group of religious leaders called Pharisees were testing Jesus with a question about divorce. Moses — the revered leader who delivered God's law to the Israelite people centuries earlier — had permitted men to give their wives a certificate of divorce. Jesus doesn't deny this, but He reframes it entirely: Moses allowed divorce not because it was God's ideal design, but as an accommodation to human hardness of heart. Jesus points back to the very beginning of the biblical story — to Genesis — and what God intended when He first created human beings for relationship with each other. The implication is both sobering and hopeful: some rules exist because of human failure, not because of God's intention.
Lord, I don't always know where my heart has gone hard — sometimes I can't feel it until You show me. So show me. And where You do, give me the courage to soften, even when it means letting go of the protection I've built around myself. Lead me back toward what You meant from the beginning. Amen.
There is a phrase in this verse that stops you cold if you sit with it: "your hearts were hard." Jesus isn't describing the Pharisees' enemies here. He is diagnosing the people of God — religious people, law-following people, people who took Scripture seriously enough to debate its fine points. And He is saying that some of the rules they lived by were not expressions of God's ideal. They were guardrails built around human failure. That is an uncomfortable thing to hear. It means that even deeply religious people can be accommodating their own hardness while sincerely believing they are being faithful. Jesus doesn't answer the question by offering a better rule. He points to a beginning — a vision of what God intended before brokenness entered the picture. Whatever your situation, this verse carries a harder and more hopeful question than "what am I allowed to do?" It asks: what are you actually capable of when your heart is genuinely soft? Hard hearts protect themselves. Soft hearts risk. Not every situation is simple — Jesus knew that too — but He seems to believe that what God designed at the beginning is still worth reaching toward. Which of your relationships has your heart quietly gone hard in, and what would it cost you to soften?
Jesus distinguishes sharply between what Moses permitted and what God originally intended. What does that gap tell us about how Scripture works — and how carefully we need to read it?
The phrase "hardness of heart" runs throughout the Bible. What do you think actually causes a heart to go hard in real, everyday life — not in theory, but in your experience?
This verse raises the uncomfortable possibility that people can follow rules that accommodate their own failures without ever realizing it. Outside the topic of marriage entirely, where might that be true in your own life?
How does Jesus pointing back to "the beginning" — to original intention rather than permitted accommodation — challenge the way you approach commitment and vulnerability in your most important relationships?
If you took seriously the idea of returning to what God designed from the start for human relationships, what is one specific thing that would need to change in how you show up for the people closest to you?
And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness. Then he suffered him.
Matthew 3:15
But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.
Matthew 5:32
Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.
Jeremiah 6:16
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
Genesis 2:24
Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because the LORD hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously: yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant.
Malachi 2:14
He said to them, "Because your hearts were hard and stubborn Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.
AMP
He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.
ESV
He said to them, 'Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.
NASB
Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.
NIV
He said to them, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.
NKJV
Jesus replied, “Moses permitted divorce only as a concession to your hard hearts, but it was not what God had originally intended.
NLT
Jesus said, "Moses provided for divorce as a concession to your hardheartedness, but it is not part of God's original plan.
MSG