At Matthew 5:32 Jesus’ words are: “However, I say to you that everyone divorcing his wife, except on account of fornication [Greek, por·neiʹa], makes her a subject for adultery [Greek, moi·kheiʹa], and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” Similarly, at Matthew 19:9 we read: “I say to you that whoever divorces his wife, except on the ground of fornication [por·neiʹa], and marries another commits adultery [moi·kheiʹa].”

“Fornication” focuses attention, not on the effect sexual immorality may have on a marital relationship, but on the nature or quality of the sexual activity itself. This is true, not only of the English word “fornication,” but also of the Greek word, por·neiʹa, used in Matthew’s account. Our interest, of course, is primarily in the Greek term used by the Gospel writer. For, no matter what the word “fornication” may commonly be understood to mean by English-speaking people, it is what the word used in the Bible meant to the writer and the people at that time that really counts and is decisive.

When “fornication” is mentioned today, people commonly think of sexual relations between members of the opposite sex, relations carried on outside marriage yet consisting of intercourse in the ‘ordinary’ or natural way. So, many have understood that, when Jesus said that “fornication [por·neiʹa]” was the only ground for divorce, he referred only to intercourse in the ordinary or natural way between a wife and a man not her husband, or, by extension, between a husband and a woman not his wife. But is that the case? Does por·neiʹa, the word used in Matthew’s account, refer only to such natural sexual relations? Or did it include all forms of immoral sexual relations, including those between individuals of the same sex and also perverted forms of sexual relations between members of the opposite sex? Just what did por·neiʹa mean to people in the first century when Jesus was on earth? And does a sincere and careful investigation of this meaning call for a reappraisal of our understanding as to what the Scriptural ground for divorce is?

A thorough study of the matter shows that por·neiʹa refers to all forms of immoral sexual relations. It is a broad term, somewhat like the word “pornography,” which is drawn from por·neiʹa or the related verb por·neuʹo. Lexicons of the Greek language clearly show this to be so.

They show that por·neiʹa comes from a root word meaning “to sell,” and it describes sex relations that are licentious and not restrained (as by the restraint of adherence to marriage bonds). Thus, of the use of the word in Bible times, Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament states that por·neiʹa described “illicit sexual intercourse in general.” Moulton and Milligan’s The Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament says it is “unlawful sexual intercourse generally.” The sixth volume of the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament says that por·neiʹa can come to mean “‘sexual intercourse’ in gen[eral] without more precise definition.”

It is because of its being a broad term (broader in its scope than the word “fornication” is in the minds of many English-speaking people) that many Bible translators use expressions such as “gross immorality,” “sexual immorality,” “sexual sins,” or similar, when translating por·neiʹa.

Does this mean that unnatural and perverted sexual relations such as those engaged in by homosexuals are included in the meaning of this term used by the apostle in recording Jesus’ words? Yes, that is the case. This can be seen by the way Jesus’ half brother Jude used por·neiʹa when referring to the unnatural sex acts of the men of Sodom and Gomorrah. (Jude 7) Concerning the use of por·neiʹa by Greek-speaking Jews around the start of the Common Era, the sixth volume of the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament says: “πορνεία [por·neiʹa] can also be ‘unnatural vice,’ . . . sodomy.”