Bible verses for marriage
Marriage verses are usually collected for weddings, which is why so many of them only work on a good day. These were chosen to be readable at both ends: the ceremony and the difficult year.
Several are not about romance at all. They are about staying, and about the ordinary work of being useful to each other, which is the part a wedding cannot rehearse and the part that takes up most of the years.
If you are reading this in a hard season rather than a happy one, start with the last two. They assume effort rather than feeling, and they were written for people who had run out of the easy kind.
Ecclesiastes 4 : 9
Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour.
An argument from usefulness rather than romance, which is exactly why it wears well. It is as true in the year nobody is sleeping as it is at the altar.
Genesis 2 : 24
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
The oldest description of what a marriage does to the rest of your relationships. Leaving is named before joining, and a surprising amount of early difficulty sits in that order being quietly reversed.
Ephesians 5 : 25
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
The standard set is self-giving, not authority. Whatever else is argued about this chapter, the verb attached to the husband is gave himself.
Colossians 3 : 14
And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.
Charity here means love in its older, wider sense. It is called the bond of perfectness because it is what holds the other virtues together when they are tired.
1 Peter 4 : 8
And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.
Fervent is the operative word: love as effort rather than feeling. The second half is the practical promise, and long marriages tend to run on it.
Scripture is the King James Version, checked against a copy held on our own server. Balmody is not a medical or mental health service.