Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Find the answers to all those questions you were too embarrassed to ask in Sunday School. Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. Hosted by Luke Taylor.
Does I Corinthians 11 Command Women to Wear Head Coverings?
I Corinthians 11
Introduction
Let’s tackle one of the questions today that no Sunday School teacher wants to get: are Christian women supposed to wear “head coverings” according to I Corinthians 11?
Because when you read it very simply and plainly, it certainly feels like they should.
I Corinthians 11:5 says
But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head
Yikes! We don’t follow that one these days. Christians have all kinds of reasons to disregard some of the bizarre commandments and customs in the Law of Moses. But this one is a New Testament command. And it tells women that they should have some kind of covering over their heads.
It’s pretty clear. And yet almost no churches today follow this, at least in the Western world.
And if you ask your pastor or your Sunday School teacher why, they probably aren’t too sure. I mean, it’s right there in the Bible in the New Testament, but we don’t do it.
I find this to be weird, and I’d like to explore why it’s in the Bible.
Turn to I Corinthians 11, and let’s get weird.
[theme music]
I Corinthians 11
Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. This is Luke Taylor, and today we’re going to be talking about female head coverings and whether we’re expected to follow these rules today.
Now, I’m just going to tell you: I think this passage in I Corinthians 11 is an interpretational nightmare. Why do I say that? Because if you look at a few different translations, you’re going to see a lot of variety in how it renders some of these thoughts.
So I’m going to read the passage in full, using the New King James Version today because I think it’s more accurate than the English Standard Version that I usually use. Actually, the King James is probably the most accurate, but this passage is already hard enough to understand without going King James on you, so I’m going to use the next best thing, the New King James.
I Corinthians 11:2-16
2 Now I praise you, brethren, that you remember me in all things and keep the traditions just as I delivered them to you. 3 But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. 4 Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonors his head. 5 But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, for that is one and the same as if her head were shaved. 6 For if a woman is not covered, let her also be shorn. But if it is shameful for a woman to be shorn or shaved, let her be covered. 7 For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. 8 For man is not from woman, but woman from man. 9 Nor was man created for the woman, but woman for the man. 10 For this reason the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.
I am just going to break in here and tell you- right now- that I am not dealing with verse 10 today, that verse there about “because of the angels.” That will probably be its own episode somewhere down the road if I can find enough research on it to constitute an episode, because it’s such a bizarre line that there isn’t that much scholarship on it.
11 Nevertheless, neither is man independent of woman, nor woman independent of man, in the Lord. 12 For as woman came from man, even so man also comes through woman; but all things are from God.
13 Judge among yourselves. Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? 14 Does not even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him? 15 But if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her; for her hair is given to her for a covering. 16 But if anyone seems to be contentious, we have no such custom, nor do the churches of God.
So that last line right there actually almost seems to nullify anything else. Paul is saying that this can be seen as a local custom, not a rule for all churches. So if anyone thinks I am going to make the case that women should actually be wearing some kind of head covering in 2024, let me just take some of the tension out of the conversation right now. This verse is not commanding this practice for all churches at all time. “If anyone seems to be contentious, we have no such custom.”
So, why is this even in the Bible if this isn’t a rule for all churches? Well, there are some universal truths about headship and gender roles and the laws of nature that do appear in these verses. Plus, once I explain how I understand the phrase “covering,” I think this whole passage is suddenly going to make a whole lot more sense. I think the phrase “covering” is either mistranslated or misunderstood in our modern English.
What is a covering?
So on gender roles, it starts with a statement on male headship.
Verses 2-3
2 Now I praise you, brethren, that you remember me in all things and keep the traditions just as I delivered them to you. 3 But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.
So there’s a chain of authority. As it pertains to human relationships, the man is supposed to lead his wife and his family. But the man should only lead them in the direction of Christ. This is in agreement with
Ephesians 5:22-24
22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. 24 Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.
I forgot to warn you, if you didn’t like Harrison Butker’s speech at the commencement ceremony last month, you probably weren’t crazy about those verses right there either. Now let’s get into the sketchy stuff of I Corinthians 11
Verses 4-5
4 Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonors his head. 5 But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, for that is one and the same as if her head were shaved.
So let’s just deal with this now, because that will blow this whole thing wide open. I believe that when it talks about a covering right here, it is not talking about a piece of cloth or a bonnet or something like that. I believe it is talking about long hair. Long hair. I believe this is making a point, in essence, that men should have short hair and that women should have long hair.
Now, if you are a man who is listening and you have long hair, I feel absolutely no condemnation or judgment toward you. That is between you and God. I don’t feel like this is a clear, emphasized commandment in the Bible. It’s a very grey area. So I don’t mean any offense with this, but this passage seems to be making the claim that in ancient Rome in the Middle East, it’s a natural thing for men to have short hair and for women to have long hair. That is also true in the modern western world. Men generally speaking have short hair, women generally speaking have long hair, although it’s very common to also see women with short hair or men with long hair. It’s also common to see men with no hair and women with purple hair. But I am speaking in generalities. Generally speaking, men have short hair and women have long hair.
So let’s look at those verses again but instead of saying “covered,” I’ll say “long hair” or “short hair.”
4 Every man praying or prophesying, having long hair, dishonors his head. 5 But every woman who prays or prophesies with her hair short dishonors her head, for that is one and the same as if her head were shaved.
And that makes perfect sense going into
verse 6
6 For if a woman is not covered, let her also be shorn. But if it is shameful for a woman to be shorn or shaved, let her be covered.
In other words, Paul believes that it’s disgraceful for a woman to have short hair, and that if she’s going to have short hair, she might as well be bald.
Now, I don’t think most women want to walk around bald, unless you go to a Green Day concert. But Paul is making a point kind of like he does in Galatians 5 where he says that he wishes those who preach circumcision would go all the way and just emasculate themselves. He is saying something similar here, that he believes that if a woman is going to have short hair, she might as well just be bald.
By the way, before you ask if going back to the Greek will illuminate anything here, I tried. The word “covered” in verse 4 is “kata.” It means “down from” or “according to.” Don’t ask me how or why that gets translated “covered.” I am not a Greek scholar but like I said, I would guess that this chapter is exceptionally hard to translate.
However, I can confirm what the word “shorn” means in this verse. This is the greek word “Keiro,” and it’s also used in
Acts 18:18
So Paul still remained a good while. Then he took leave of the brethren and sailed for Syria, and Priscilla and Aquila were with him. He had his hair cut off at Cenchrea, for he had taken a vow.
When it says he had his hair cut off, it is this word “Keiro,” and the vow that it’s talking about right there is the time that Paul took a Nazirite vow. At the end of a Nazirite vow, you shave your head, as detailed in Numbers 6.
So back to I Corinthians 11: when you understand what “shorn” means, you understand what Paul is saying about having your head covered and uncovered.
But just to prove this, let’s skip down to
Verses 13-15
13 Judge among yourselves. Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? 14 Does not even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him? 15 But if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her; for her hair is given to her for a covering.
So there you see it right there in verse 15, that hair is equated with a covering. It bounces back and forth right here between a man having long hair and a woman having a covering. So I am not some Greek scholar who can explain for you why a word that seems to be talking about hair is being translated as “covering” in English. It’s a very bizarre passage. It gets even more confusing when you go outside of the King James and New King James, in my opinion. But I think we can make sense of it when we read it all with the idea that a woman’s covering is her long hair.
If you read this as saying that women are literally supposed to wear bonnets or head coverings, but that men are NOT supposed to wear them, it’s hard to square that with the rest of the Bible because this is not something that anywhere else in Scripture teaches, yet Paul refers to it right here as the most natural thing in the world.
If it’s just natural, then why isn’t it taught elsewhere in Scripture? In fact, the opposite was sometimes taught. When God was commanding the priests how to minister in the tabernacle,
Exodus 28:40 says
For Aaron’s sons you shall make tunics, and you shall make sashes for them. And you shall make hats for them, for glory and beauty.
Well that would contradict what Paul says in I Corinthians 11 about the laws of nature, if we interpret I Corinthians 11 as being about literal head coverings. Because Exodus 28 says the male priests are to wear hats, and I Corinthians 11 says that men’s heads should be uncovered in worship. In Exodus 28, it’s literally for glory and beauty. That’s what it says.
The Theobros on Twitter recently had this debate, where they were arguing about whether it’s acceptable for guys to wear a baseball cap to church. And they were pretty anti-hats in church, and I’m fine with accepting that if that’s someone’s conviction, but their arguments against hats in church were so judgmental and illogical. And one of them said to me, “I Corinthians 11 says Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonors his head.” And I replied, “the very next verse says that women ARE to have their heads covered, so are you saying that the next time I walk into church, I should just pop off my baseball cap and put it on my wife’s head?” And he didn’t respond to that, of course, because his argument was dumb.
So I’m not here to defend or oppose wearing a hat into church. And if you have a stronger opinion on that than me, that’s totally fine. But don’t pretend there’s a Bible verse about it.
And if I wear a baseball cap into church, just take it in the Exodus 28 way, that it’s for glory and beauty. In case that’s not obvious when you see it.
[music]
Housekeeping/Mailbag
Next time on this podcast, I’m considering going back and finishing our Jude study. I’m glad I took a little break from it because I discovered something in my Bible study about what it means to pray in the Spirit, as Jude commands at the end of his book. So I may have to go back and dive into that next time.
If you have any hate mail for me after today’s episode, you can get in touch by emailing weirdstuffinthebible@gmail.com. Or just leave a comment.
What this says about gender and nature
So if this passage is not teaching us that women are to wear cloths on their heads, what is it teaching us? I think it’s teaching us about gender roles and about nature itself.
Some will try to say that this passage can be disregarded because it only pertained to the Corinthian culture, and since their culture was so different from ours, that we can set aside these verses because they don’t apply anymore.
I think we get into very dangerous territory when we start disregarding certain verses in Scripture based on the culture argument. It’s true that their culture was a lot different. So when you use their culture as the basis for God’s commands to them, you can then use that argument to disregard anything in Scripture that you don’t want to follow.
For example, it’s not popular today to say that homosexuality is a sin. So many false teachers will claim that homosexuality was only said to be a sin in the Bible because in the Roman culture, homosexual relationships were very exploitative and abusive, and so the prohibitions on homosexuality in the New Testament don’t apply to modern homosexual relationships that are said to be loving and based on consent. So see, you can nullify whatever his inconvenient in the Bible when you trot out the culture argument.
However, knowing more about the Corinthian culture CAN assist with our understanding of this passage. In Paul’s day, there was a cult around a pagan goddess named Aphrodite, and the women who served in Aphrodite temples shaved their heads and engaged in prostitution as a form of worship. So perhaps this is why Paul condemns women worshipping in churches with their heads shaved, because it resembles a popular pagan practice of that day, and Paul didn’t want worship of God to be confused with worship of Aphrodite.
Another argument that Paul uses- and I think this also cancels out the culture argument- is that Paul says that for a women to cut her hair short or shave it goes against nature.
Verses 14 and 15 again
Does not even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him? 15 But if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her
Now this is where I really plant my flag in the ground in regard to these verses. And again, if you disagree, if you’re a guy with long hair, I have no problem with you. It’s between you and God. If someone with long hair gets saved, there are a hundred and fifty areas I’d probably disciple him in before I got around to hair length. But it seems to be saying here that there’s a law that goes beyond the laws of culture, and that’s the laws of nature, and that it’s simply obvious and natural to people that men should have short hair and that women should have long hair.
Now, what constitutes long hair and what constitutes short hair? This is a very grey area. Like, I might have a conviction that this is what men and women ought to do, but I’m very unconcerned by how they want to do it. Just as a point of reference, if you watch Lord of the Rings, the Hobbits are probably not breaking this commandment. Their hair is kinda bushy, about shoulder length at the most. I think that’s probably fine. Aragorn and Boromir’s hair is kinda borderline. I think the Elves have officially gone too far. They have crossed the line.
But then again, Elves aren’t technically human so perhaps the rules don’t apply to them. I’d have to ask Tolkien if he had an opinion on this. I don’t know what’s natural for an elf, and that’s the point. Paul roots his commands here in nature. And clearly in the Roman culture, it was even recognized as natural for men to have short hair and women to have long hair.
That’s why I don’t really accept all those Jesus paintings that have Jesus with long hair. I’m not saying they’re sinful to have, but anytime I see a Jesus with Legolas-length hair, I just don’t accept it as a legitimate depiction of Jesus because I don’t believe Jesus would have kept His hair in such a way that contradicts what Paul said about hair in I Corinthians 11.
So to anyone who would disregard this based on culture or nature and say that what is natural to the Romans might not be what’s natural to us: again, there is a parallel with the Bible’s prohibition on homosexuality. Paul roots his prohibition on homosexuality in Romans 1 on how it goes against nature.
Verses 26-27 say
For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. 27 Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful,
So some will say that homosexuality is not sinful because the Romans simply went against what was natural to them. In other words, that if homosexuality comes naturally to you, then it’s not wrong for you.
But that’s not what Paul is saying. Paul says that homosexuality goes against nature itself; the natural order of how God ordained Creation to operate. The laws of nature.
Now hair length is not nearly as serious as sexuality, so that’s why I won’t make a big deal about it if you disagree with me on this. I’ve known good, Godly Christian men who had long hair. And I’ve known wonderful Christian women with short hair. I don’t really mind so much how short a woman’s hair is as long as she isn’t trying to look like a boy. If she still looks feminine, I wouldn’t say anything.
But if you disregard what Paul says in I Corinthians 11 about hair length on the basis of culture or nature, just know that you also leave the door wide open to accept homosexuality on the basis of culture and nature differences.
Now, like I said, sexuality is not as big of a deal as hair length. We’re not seeing mass apostasy in churches right now because of hair length. But I do think that whatever your position is, it should be biblically sound. Biblically consistent. Consistency is all I ask. Or else, I can’t resist poking some holes in it. And next thing you know, my wife is stealing my baseball cap the next time I’m walking into church.
Closing Thoughts
Some closing thoughts. We went to some weird places today. And I still didn’t even get into I Corinthians 11:10, maybe we’ll do that some other time.
The Bible is not weird. WE are weird when we go against God’s ordained standards for worship, for nature, or for gender roles. Now, some people go a little further than what God says in those areas. Some Christian traditions do require women to wear literal head coverings of cloths or bonnets or hoods. And I think that’s actually going further than what the Bible says.That’s a little weird to me, and it goes a little beyond the what the Bible actually commands.
The main point, though, is that when we’re deciding what to do or what not to do- what’s natural or what’s not natural- I think it’s important to put the Bible first in our lives. Whether it makes us weird to this culture or not.
If the Bible says that women are supposed to wear head coverings when they worship, then women should wear head coverings. I don’t think that’s what it’s saying, but if that’s what it was saying, then you should do it.
If the Bible says that men should have short hair and that women should have long hair- and this seems to be a bit more in line with what it’s saying- then I think that’s what we should follow.
If the Bible says that wives are to submit to the headship of their husbands, and that husbands should submit themselves and their whole households to the headship of Christ, then they should do that.
And if you think that’s weird, I hope you’re a little more weird today, too. Thanks for listening, God bless you for sticking around until the end, and we’ll see you next time.