Mark 10:3

And he answered and said unto them, What did Moses command you?

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

10:1-12 Wherever Jesus was, the people flocked after him in crowds, and he taught them. Preaching was Christ's constant practice. He here shows that the reason why Moses' law allowed divorce, was such that they ought not to use the permission; it was only for the hardness of their hearts. God himself joined man and wife together; he has fitted them to be comforts and helps for each other. The bond which God has tied, is not to be lightly untied. Let those who are for putting away their wives consider what would become of themselves, if God should deal with them in like manner.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

See this question about divorce explained in the notes at Matthew 19:1-12.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

CHAPTER 10

Mr 10:1-12. Final Departure from Galilee—Divorce. ( = Mt 19:1-12; Lu 9:51).

See on [1471]Mt 19:1-12.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Ver. 3-9. The order of the discourse as recorded by Mark something differeth from that in Matthew, but the evangelists were not so accurate in that, but took care only to set down the substance of the discourse, as appears from the relation of several other parts of the history. In the notes on Matthew 19:3-6 the reader will find whatsoever stands in need of explication opened.

See Poole on "Matthew 19:3", and following verses to Matthew 19:6.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And he answered and said unto them,.... Very prudently and wisely,

what did Moses command you? according to Matthew, he put another question to them; see Matthew 19:4; no doubt but both were put, and this after they had urged the authority and law of Moses: and therefore be very pertinently asks them, what Moses had said about divorces, what law he had left; and puts them upon producing and repeating it, that the sense of it might be examined, and it be considered, upon what account it was given.

Geneva Study Bible

And he answered and said unto them, What did Moses command you?

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Expositor's Greek Testament

Mark 10:3. τί ὑμῖν ἐνετείλατο Μ.: here Jesus has in view not what Moses allowed in Deuteronomy 24:1, but what he in Genesis enjoined as the ideal state of things (Moses from the Jewish point of view author of the Pentateuch and all its legislation). They naturally supposed He had in view the former (Mark 10:4).

Pulpit Commentary

Verses 3, 4. - And he answered and said unto them, What did Moses command you? They professed much reverence for Moses; he therefore appeals to their great lawgiver. And they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and to put her away. If we now turn to St. Matthew (Matthew 21:4, 5). He we shall find that our Lord then appeals to the original institution of marriage. "Have ye not read, that he which made them from the beginning, made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the twain shall become one flesh? So that they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." He thus reminds them that marriage is a Divine institution; that as Adam and Eve were united by him in a union which was indissoluble, therefore he intended that the marriage bond should remain ever, so that the wife ought never to be separated from her husband, since she becomes by marriage a very part of her husband. To this purpose St. Augustine says ('City of God,' bk. 14:22). He "It was not of the spirit which commands and the body which obeys, nor of the rational soul which rules and the irrational desire which is ruled, nor of the contemplative virtue which is supreme, and the active which is subject, nor of the understanding of the mind and the sense of the body; but plainly of the matrimonial union, by which the sexes are mutually bound together, that our Lord, when asked whether it were lawful for any cause to put away one's wife, answered as in St. Matthew (Matthew 21:4, 5). It is certain, then, that from the first men were created as we see and know them to be now, of two sexes - male and female - and that they are called one, either on account of the matrimonial union, or on account of the origin of the woman, who was created from out of the side of the man." Mark 10:3