This page was migrated in July 2022 from my older website, biblicalambiguities.net.
31 July 2022 Navigate 'up to the Genesis index: index-genesis.
Revised Version:
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
I would read, instead,
This is why a man leaves his father and his mother, and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.
The speaker, as I see it, is not giving a command about how, ideally, marriage is to be. And this isn't a continuation of Adam's quote -- Adam is not looking forward and decreeing the institution of marriage on the basis of his recent meeting with Eve.
Instead, we are looking at the narrator's conclusion to this episode -- he explains that the primeval separation of man and woman from a single "flesh" is the reason that man seeks to "cling to" and "become one flesh with" his wife.
From this verse, which gives the reason for sex, we move on to the next verse, which begins an explanation of why we hide our sex organs from public view.
This is why a man leaves his father and his mother, and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.
Kittel says that, at "they become one flesh", we should follow the Septuagint, Peshitta, Vulgate, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan in reading, "the two of them" instead of "they".
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