Truth
On
Tough
Texts
ISSUE 28 –
November/2007
What
About the Head Covering?
I
Corinthians 11:2-16
AS
MENTIONED AT THE BEGINNING OF OUR STUDY of the
principles for biblical interpretation, let us now use
those principles to develop the Biblical teaching on a
specific subject. Which subject? There are countless
subjects we could choose, of course, and whichever we
choose will not be of equal interest to everyone. A
subject that recently caught my interest, however, was
that of head coverings on women. What does Scripture
really say about this? Should women today wear a head
covering? Let us apply these principles (except the
Paradox Principle, as it does not apply) to find
out.
The Reverence, Diligence, and Illumination
Principles
These three principles
must always be the foundation of any study we do. We
must not approach the Word of God flippantly or
nonchalantly. Neither should we approach It with any
preconceived ideas. Further, we must not approach It
without a dependence upon the Holy Spirit’s teaching.
So, as we approach our main text, I Corinthians 11:2-16,
let us do so with reverence, diligence, and
dependence.
The Plain Principle
Applying this
principle immediately reveals one important truth:
this passage does not command women to wear a
covering. There are those who use this text to teach
that a woman must wear a hat, a scarf, or other article
to cover the head, but the text clearly does not say
that. In other words, this passage does not
mandate a head
covering.
It is also
interesting that the covering Paul speaks of is a
metaphor, or illustration, of submission. Unlike
the allegorical approach to interpretation, which reads
allegory into the text, Paul makes is clear that the
covering is symbolic. When he says the head of the woman
is the man, it’s obvious
that a man is not the literal head of a woman, rather he
is the authority over her, as Christ is the authority
over him.
Applying the Plain
Principle here also destroys today’s common teaching
that women can preach, teach, and lead in church
meetings. The teaching comes from the words every woman that
prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered
dishonoureth her head (v. 5). But if we take
the Scripture plainly, this verse says nothing about
church worship. We must not read anything into the text
that is not there. As we’ll point out later, Paul refers
here to a woman praying or prophesying (that is, proclaiming the truth) in public
places, not in congregational meetings.
The Grammatical Principle
The Greek word
translated uncovered
in verse 5 is the Greek akatakaluptos.
The root katakaluptos
means “to cover with a veil.” This veil was not just a
hat or other such article that covered the top of the
head, rather it was the common eastern veil that covered
the entire face except for the eyes. This word appears
in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old
Testament) in Exodus 26:34, where Moses hides the ark
behind a curtain, and in Isaiah 6:2, where the seraphim
cover their faces before the glory of God. So, the
language clearly demonstrates that the covering was actually a veil. Those who teach that the
covering is for today are clearly not doing what the
language teaches. Why do they not teach that the woman
should be veiled? Because, as we’ll see in a moment,
Paul was dealing here with a local custom. How many
Christian ladies today would be willing to go out of
their houses with their faces totally
veiled?
The word covering
in verse 15 is a different Greek word, peribolaion,
which refers to a cloak, wrap, cape, outer garment, or a
mantle. It seems that Paul uses it here to reemphasize a
covering for the head. In this case, as we’ll see later,
it is actually the woman’s hair that can be her covering.
The Greek behind for (anti) in verse
15 substantiates this fact, as it carries the normal
meaning of “in place of” or “instead of.” In Luke 11:11,
for example, where Jesus asks, “If a son shall ask bread
of any of you that is a father, will he give him a
stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for [instead of]
a fish give him a serpent?” James also uses this word.
He points out that some people say, “To day or to morrow
we will go into such a city, and continue there a year,
and buy and sell, and get gain.” He then adds, “For [instead]
that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live,
and do this, or that” (Jas. 4:13, 15). So, Paul is
saying that a woman’s hair can be worn as a symbol of
submission instead of a literal veil. (We will see another
grammatical point in the next
principle.)
The Historical Principle
This principle
strongly substantiates the Grammatical Principle, for
again, the so-called covering
was actually a veil. As the classic work Manners and Customs
of Bible Lands points
out:
The veil was the
distinctive female wearing apparel. All females, with
the exception of maidservants and women in a low
condition of life, wore a veil. They would usually never
lay it aside, except when they were in the presence of
servants, or on rare occasions. This custom has
prevailed among the Eastern women down to the modern
era. When traveling, women may throw the veil over the
back part of their head, but if they see a man
approaching, they place it back in its original
position. Thus Rebekah, when she saw Isaac approaching
her camel caravan, covered her face with her veil (Gen.
24:64, 65). When women are at home they do not speak to
a guest without being veiled and in the presence of
maids. They do not enter the guest’s chamber, but
rather, standing at the door, they make it known to the
servant what is wanted (See 2 Kings 4:12, 13). It is
well to remember that prostitutes went unveiled. Today,
as in olden times, virgins and married women may be seen
wearing veils in Bible lands. The old customs are not
being observed strictly by some Moslem Women, for they
are now going unveiled.[i]
Furthermore, the weight of
historical evidence indicates that the wearing of a veil
was a universal custom in the first century in both
Jewish[ii] and Greco-Roman[iii] culture. This historical
fact has been understood for centuries. Puritan Matthew
Henry (1662-1714), for example, taught, “To understand
this, it must be observed that it was a signification
either of shame or subjection for persons to be veiled,
or covered, in the eastern countries, contrary to the
custom of ours, where the being bare-headed betokens
subjection, and being covered superiority and
dominion.”
Even the briefest
historical look at the city of Corinth reveals what the
situation was. Corinth was an extremely pagan and
immoral city. Women of loose morals, especially the
prostitute priestesses in the Temple of Aphrodite,
didn’t wear veils and kept their hair short to
differentiate them from other women. There was also a
strong spirit of feminism (women’s liberation). Women
didn’t want children because it ruined their bodies and
restricted their freedom, they demanded the same jobs as
men, they dressed and acted like men, and they cast off
all signs of femininity. History records, for example,
that women of that time did such masculine things as
wrestling, sword throwing, and running bare-breasted
while hunting wild boars. One of the first symbols of
this liberation was that they took off their veils. So,
the feminists took off their veils as a protest and the
prostitutes took them off to advertise.
Apparently, Christian
women were lured into this practice, as they have been
in our day in different expressions. It’s quite possible
that the principle of Christian liberty (“all things are
lawful”) had been turned into license. As a result, the
women threw off their veils and their place of
submission. Again, just like today. Paul, therefore,
reminds them that the veil was a symbol of their
submission to their husbands.
Another extremely
important historical and grammatical point in the
passage is the Greek word behind such
(toioutos) in verse 16, which means “such as
this, of this kind, or sort.” What is particularly
interesting is that most of the popular English
translations wrongly translate the word as “other” (NIV,
NASB, NLT, NCV, RSV), despite the clear fact that it
means such,
never “other.” The implication then is, “There is
no need to argue with anyone on these issues because we
have no other custom.” But that is an
interpretation, not a translation and is not what
Paul is saying. To illustrate, as does one commentator,
“If someone asks me, does your family always eat turkey
on Thanksgiving?—and I answer, we have no other
custom, it means that we eat turkey. However, if I
reply, “We have no such custom, it means that we
do not eat turkey.”[iv] So, if we follow
the modern translations, Paul is saying that we do,
indeed, follow the customs mentioned earlier, but
that is the exact opposite of what he is saying. He
is saying, in fact, we have no such
custom (as the KJV, NKJV, Young’s Literal,
ASV, and ESV rightly say), which underscores again that
such practices are cultural. In other words, there is no
reason to be contentious because the covering issue is a cultural
one.
This leads us right to the
Contextual Principle.
The Contextual Principle
The point of this
entire passage is submission, not the wearing of clothing. Just as there was
nothing right or wrong in the eating or not eating of
meat that had been sacrificed to idols, which Paul just
dealt with in 10:23-33 (see also Rom. 14:1-15:6), there
was nothing intrinsically right or wrong in wearing or
not wearing a veil. As long as clothing is modest, it
meets the Scriptural demand (I Tim
2:9).
The purpose of the
veil, then, was to be a public testimony of a woman’s
submission to her husband. The word head is
the key here. A man is responsible directly to Christ as
his head and doesn’t wear a veil because he is the image
of God as a ruler. A woman, however, is directly
responsible to her husband as her head. This is
dramatically illustrated in verse 7. Here we see that
the man is both the
image and
glory of God, while the woman is only the
image of
God, but the glory of
man. While the man was made to
demonstrate God’s authority, will, and glory, the
woman was made to demonstrate the
man’s authority, will, and
glory. Further, the man illustrates the magnificent
creature God created from Himself, while the woman
illustrates the magnificent creature God made from a
man. Many people today don’t like this principle, and
neither did most Corinthians like it, but it’s still
true.
In light of the
throwing off of this principle in Corinth, it was
absolutely necessary for Paul to restate it, just as God
stated it when Adam sinned. Genesis 3:16 plainly
declares, “Unto the woman he said, I will greatly
multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou
shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to
thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” The Hebrew
for “rule” (masal) means “to install in an office, to elevate to
official position.” Man and woman were once “co-rulers,”
as the word “them” in Genesis 1:27-28 clearly
demonstrates, but the husband was now installed as the
ruler.
Even more dramatic,
however, is the phrase “your desire shall be for your
husband.” This phrase does not mean what we might first
think; it doesn’t mean “a desire to please.” In fact, it
means quite the opposite! “Desire” comes from an Arabic
word which means “to compel, to urge, or to seek
control.” It appears in only one other place, where we
find it in the same construction as here. In Genesis 4:7
we read of Cain’s anger and God’s encouragement that he
could still bring the correct offering. The latter part
of the verse reads, “If thou doest not well, sin lieth
at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou
shalt rule over him.” The same meaning is here in 3:16.
Literally, it says, “Your desire will be to control your
husband, but he will rule over you.” We therefore see
that this is the
curse! It is from here that the
“battle of the sexes” came. “Women’s Liberation” is
nothing but women trying to rule, and “Male Chauvinism”
is nothing but men trying to squelch the
rebellion.
If I may interject, the
home life of many Christians today is in shambles
because the wife “rules the roost.” Neither does this
mean that the husband should act like Napoleon. It means
that he is to lead his home in accordance with God’s
Word. And may we add, every man will stand before God
and give an account for how he lead his
family.
So again, the veil was a
symbol of a wife’s submission to her husband. It was a
public testimony of a wife’s recognition of her husband
as being her head, a testimony that was in direct
contrast to the spirit of rebellion that prevailed in
Corinth.
Perhaps the pivotal
verses concerning this issue are verses 14-15, Doth not even nature
itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a
shame unto him? But if a woman have long hair, it is a
glory to her: for her hair is given her for a
covering. These verses should clear up any
question about the veil being a mandate for today. As
mentioned earlier, the word for is the
Greek anti,
which carries the normal meaning of “in place of” or
“instead of.” Why is long hair a shame for man? Because
it’s a covering, and a man is not to be covered (v. 7).
How ridiculous a man would look in a veil! But a woman
has long hair simply because she needs “a veil.” Her
hair is a glory to her as she is a glory to her husband,
and it serves as a veil, a symbol of her submission.
When you compare the first part of the passage with the
last part, it becomes clear that regarding the head
covering Paul first talks about custom but then
talks about nature, that is, what God designed. If custom does not
require a veil to symbolize submission, as it did
because of the situation in Corinth, then a woman’s hair
is enough to symbolize that
submission.
The Comparison Principle
As we saw in the Plain
Principle, this passage does not mandate or command the
wearing of a veil. When we now apply the Comparison
Principle, we discover that no such command appears
anywhere in Scripture. We must not mandate that which
God does not mandate, for when we do, we degenerate into
legalism.
As also pointed out
in the Plain Principle, some teachers use this passage
to teach that women can preach, teach, and lead in
church meetings, but plainly the text does not say that.
Other Scriptures clearly forbid women from teaching in
church meetings (I Cor. 14:34) or usurping
authority over a man (I Tim. 2:12). This praying
and prophesying (that is, proclaiming the truth) must refer to a
women’s public witnessing. This, too, coincides with
other Scripture. A woman can teach children and other
women (Tit. 2:3-4), and nowhere does the Scripture
prohibit a woman from witnessing even to a man, but she
is never permitted a leadership role over
men.
The Outline Principle
As one reads this passage,
Paul’s progression of thought emerges. As we’ve seen,
the point of this passage is submission, not the wearing
of clothing. With that in mind, then, we see at least
three points. First, we see The Statement of the
Principle (v. 3), which is that of headship. Second, we
see The Development of the Principle (vs. 4-12), which
is that a man does not veil himself because he is the
image of God as a ruler, but a woman is to veil herself
because she is to demonstrate the man’s authority, will,
and glory. Third, we see The Application of the
Principle (vs. 13-16), which is that to demonstrate her
submission, the woman is to be veiled. The method of the
veiling might demand a literal veil, as was the case in
Corinth, or her veil can be her hair if no other symbol
is needed.
The Progressive Principle
This passage
provides us with another example of the Progressive
Principle, that God reveals His truth in steps. As
mentioned earlier, the custom of wearing a veil goes
back millennia, but Paul now reveals the next step in
the progression. He emphasizes that it is not the symbol of
submission that is the most important, rather the reality of submission that’s crucial. If custom permits,
a woman’s hair can just as effectively demonstrate her
submission to her husband as can a literal veil. Why?
Because submission is a matter of attitude. After all,
is it possible for a woman who wears a covering to still
be unsubmissive? Of course. So, as always, Paul takes us
past forms and symbols to emphasize reality and
truth.
The Practical Principle
As always, we do not
apply this principle until last. Oh, how much damage is
done by quick application! We must first see what God
says by painstaking study before we can apply it. And
again, the interpretation process uncovers the
application. We don’t have to look for the application, for it becomes
self-evident. At least three applications flow from the
study of this issue. First, every man should be reminded
of his submission to God. Second, every woman should be
reminded of her submission to her husband. Third, every
Christian should be reminded not to add artificial
symbols to Christian living.
As we close this issue,
let us notice that we did not come to our position
quickly. Indeed, we have taken several pages to examine
this subject. This should again emphasize that Biblical
interpretation demands diligence. This should encourage
us to practice such diligence always in our study of the
Word of God.
Dr. J. D.
Watson
Pastor-Teacher
Grace Bible
Church
NOTES
[i]
Fred Wight, Manners and Customs
of Bible Lands, CD-ROM computer
version; electronic
text (c) 1995 Epiphany
Software.
[ii] As in the
apocryphal book 3 Maccabees 4:6; the Mishna, Ketuboth 7.6;
and the Babylonian Talmud, Ketuboth 72a-b.
Cited by David K. Lowery in The Bible Knowledge
Commentary (Wheaton: Victor,
1983), p. 529.
[iii] As in Plutarch, Moralia 3.232c;
4.267b; and Apuleius, The Golden Ass
11.10. Cited by David K. Lowery in The Bible Knowledge
Commentary, p.
529.
[iv] Gordon H. Clark,
I Corinthians (Jefferson,
Maryland: The Trinity Foundation, 1975), p.
177.
