4 “Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonors his head. 5But 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. 6For 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.”
Having established the principle of role in relationships and organizations, Paul now turns to the subject of the role of women in public worship.
11:4
Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonors his head.
The second use of the word “head” in this sentence may mean dishonoring the leadership or headship of Jesus Christ (previous verse). The ultimate authority is in Christ. Verses four through six are an extension of verses two and three. The phrase “praying or prophesying” conveys public worship. Prayer is presenting issues to God in public worship. Prophesying in 1 Corinthians carries the idea of proclaiming God’s extant Word, not foretelling. If a man does not pray and expound God’s Word as a male, he dishonors his head. If a man does this with long hair like a woman, he dishonors his leadership masculinity and his Leader-Lord. He acts like a woman; he is prissy and feminine. Masculinity in the Bible correlates with leadership. A man with long hair is a disgrace to masculinity.
11:5
But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head,
The issue in this verse is the conduct of women in public worship. The woman who prays or prophesies with her head “uncovered” dishonors her “head,” that is, her husband, who has responsibility for order in the family. The covering to which Paul refers here is her longer hair (11:14-15). This covering is a symbol of acceptance of the principle of headship/leadership. Note that women here are both praying and prophesying, so they have the freedom to minister publicly. Prophesying, in this context, means expounding God’s Word. A woman needs to expound God’s Word as a woman and a man to expound God’s Word as a man.
1 Corinthians 11:14-15, 14Does not even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him? 15But if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her; for her hair is given to her for a covering.
for that is one and the same as if her head were shaved.
Hair is one indication of a woman’s femininity. Women who shaved their heads in Roman culture wanted to appear as men. This distorted the distinction between masculinity and femininity. Men typically wore their hair short in that culture. A bald woman distorts her femininity and responsiveness to masculinity.
A woman who repudiated her femininity rejected her creation by God as a woman. It was a rebellion against what God made her.
11:6
For if a woman is not covered, let her also be shorn.
If a woman does not have longer hair than men, then she might as well go all the way and shave her head bald! The word “shorn” refers to shearing sheep with a razor. It is a shame if a woman’s physical appearance is like a man’s. A woman’s beauty is in her longer hair because it is an indication of her femininity. This is not to say that God forbids a woman from getting her hair cut; rather, the principle concerns her hair length relative to men’s.
But if it is shameful for a woman to be shorn or shaved, let her be covered.
A bald woman is an unbecoming thing! It is a shame. This is an argument of reduction ad absurdum, that is, an argument from the absurd. This is pure sarcasm.
PRINCIPLE:
A woman’s longer hair is an indication of beautiful femininity.
APPLICATION:
The issue is not so much whether women wear hats in church but whether they wear the pants at home! When a woman usurps leadership in church or home, she loses her femininity. This is not a pretty picture. A feminine woman is a beauty.
I think u should be able to come as u are. It doesn't matter how u look. It matters what's inside the heart
Thanks for your clear teaching on this passage. There’s a lot of gobbledy-goop out there regarding hats etc.
Your site has become one of my primary sources of study. When are you going to do Hebrews? I’m teaching 6:4-6 Sunday. I’d like to read your take on it.
Dave, my next book is Hebrews. I will finish John in about a year. However, I will send you some information on Heb 6 via email.
Dave, I forgot that I published an article on this passage (under “Articles”) here: http://versebyversecommentary.com/articles/problem-passages/hebrews-512-620/
Hi Dr. Grant,I’m just wondering if long hair or short hair matters since its non-essentials and God is searching our heart.Thanks in advance!
Robert, the long-hair issue is not a basic doctrine of Scripture, however, it is a doctrine of the Word of God. Since the longer hair issue represents femininity, it is important that Christian women conduct themselves in that manner. The issue of how long is long is still another matter. See the remainder of these studies in chapter 11 for that. Since this is not a fundamental doctrine of the Bible Christians should not cause division or hostility with one another over this issue.
Thank you doctor.
1. So should men wear caps?
2. Should women use their long hear as covering or should they use head dresses to cover their head?
Thank you Doctor
Ndi, thanks for your blog. If you continue with the studies in 1 Corinthians, you will find your answers. Just click on the verse in the upper right corner.
Dr.Grant, you said,
“This distorted the distinction between masculinity and femininity. Men typically wore their hair short in that culture.”
If this is cultural, then in our time, long hair on a man shouldn’t be a shame, am I correct? My hair is around shoulder to mid-back length. I’ve met other guys with long hair that have a manly, viking look; no where near effeminate.
Others have mentioned having one’s hair in an effeminate fashion. Others argue as to what is considered “long.”
One last thing, I have plenty of elderly ladies in my church with short hair.
Donnie, the fundamental issue is to distinguish masculinity from femineity. The Bible does not prescribe how long men’s hair should be, but at minimum, his hair should not be characterized as feminine by culture. I see what you mean that some men with long hair in our culture are deemed as masculine. The central argument by Paul probably had to do with the issue of homosexuality in the first century, that is, a man with long hair had the appearance of a homosexual.
You may want to look at this summary of the issue with the following two articles:
The query immediately rises, What made Paul concerned with hair lengths of different genders? In particular why did he find it disgraceful for men to wear long hair and for women to wear short hair? Fortunately a wide range of contemporary sources, both Jewish and Greco-Roman, help answer that question. Late antique Mediterranean social custom regarded the natural order (φύσις) as dictating that the natural hair lengths for men and women were respectively short and long. Therefore inversion of this order amounted to a form of cross-dressing whereby dissidents abdicated their given gender identity in favor of the opposite gender and presented themselves as homosexual. Writing between 30 B.C. and A.D. 40, the Hellenistic Jewish thinker Pseudo-Phocylides admonished parents, “If a child is a boy, do not let locks grow on his head. Braid not his crown nor make cross-knots on the top of his head. Long hair [κόμαν] is not fit for men, but for voluptuous women. Guard the youthful beauty of a comely boy, because many rage for intercourse with a man.”25 Here long hair in men and boys is portrayed as effeminate. And the transition from the hairstyle of boys to their protection demands for Pseudo-Phocylides the equation of long male hair with homosexuality.
25 P. W. van der Horst, The Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides with Introduction and Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 81–83 (vv. 210–14).
MacGregor, K. R. (2009). Is 1 Corinthians 11:2–16 a Prohibition of Homosexuality? Bibliotheca Sacra, 166, 210–211.
Paul’s exhortation that men pray and prophesy with their heads uncovered and that women pray and prophesy with their heads covered meant that men must perform their religious duties with short hair and women their religious duties with long hair. This would ensure that men looked like men and women looked like women, thereby precluding the cross-gender identification and obvious homosexual overtones conveyed by men looking like women and women looking like men.32 That Paul’s remarks concerning head coverings were aimed at the prohibition of male effeminacy, female masculinity, and their implied homosexuality fits like a hand in a glove of the Sitz im Leben disclosed by the remainder of the Corinthian correspondence. For in 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 Paul had already condemned the full scope of homosexual behavior in uncharacteristically graphic language: “neither μαλακοὶ or ἀρσενοκοῖται … will inherit the kingdom of God.” Although dismissed on theological grounds by contemporary advocates of homosexuality in the church, the linguistic and historical evidence overwhelmingly indicates that the conjunction of μαλακοὶ and ἀρσενοκοῖται functions as a merism. Μαλακοὶ signifies the passive partner in homosexual intercourse and ἀρσενοκοῖται signifies the active partner in homosexual intercourse, a fact recognized by the majority of New Testament critics across the liberal-conservative spectrum.33 This explicit denunciation coupled with the aforementioned extrabiblical evidence proves that homosexuality was a major problem in the Corinthian church. This problem along with its associated cross-gender appearance and behavior resulted from what Thiselton styles an “over-realized eschatology.”34 In other words a certain number of the believers regarded themselves as belonging completely to the new age and so possessing a “wisdom” (2:6) that rendered the moral values of the present world irrelevant and transformed these members of the new age into τελείοι (2:6), πνευματικοί (2:15), and σοφοί (3:18). Hence the community took pride in the incestuous relationship of one of its members, which vividly depicted their freedom from outmoded standards (5:1–2). Similarly, if Jesus’ kingdom inauguration healed the rift between male and female, the Corinthians felt entitled to blur the distinction between the sexes, a feat that homosexuality accomplished par excellence. Since male effeminacy, female masculinity, and homosexual practice violated Jewish standards in exactly the same way as the Corinthians’ approval of incest, O’Connor rightly remarks that “scandal was the symbol of their new spiritual freedom; the more people they shocked, the more right they felt themselves to be.”35 With unease and irritation predominating his tone, Paul sharply upbraided the Corinthians for their spiritual underdevelopment, explaining that Christian freedom from the Mosaic Law in no way absolved believers from the eternal principles embodied therein, which principles comprise God’s unchanging law (6:12–20; 9:21; 10:1–13).
32 While differing in secondary details, this conclusion is foreshadowed by the work of O’Connor, “Sex and Logic in 1 Corinthians 11:2–16,” 485–90; and Philip B. Payne, “Wild Hair and Gender Equality in 1 Corinthians 11:2–16,” Priscilla Papers 20 (2006): 11–15.
33 Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida, eds., Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1989), 1:772; Bauer, Arndt, and Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 135, 613; Robert A. J. Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (Nashville: Abingdon, 2001), 306–32; Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 449; Craig S. Keener, 1-2 Corinthians, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 54–55; Hays, First Corinthians, 97; Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 243–44; Bruce W. Winter, After Paul Left Corinth: The Influence of Secular Ethics and Social Change (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 118–20; D. F. Wright, “Homosexuals or Prostitutes? The Meaning of Arsenokoitai (1 Cor. 6:9, 1 Tim. 1:10),” Vigiliae Christianae 38 (1984): 125–53; David E. Garland, 1 Corinthians, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 212–15; Ben Witherington III, Conflict and Community in Corinth: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 166; Wolfgang Stegemann, “Paul and the Sexual Mentality of His World,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 23 (1993): 164–65; and David F. Greenberg, The Construction of Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 212–14.
34 Anthony C. Thiselton, “Realized Eschatology at Corinth,” New Testament Studies 24 (1978): 510–26.
35 O’Connor, “Sex and Logic in 1 Corinthians 11:2–16,” 490.
MacGregor, K. R. (2009). Is 1 Corinthians 11:2–16 a Prohibition of Homosexuality? Bibliotheca Sacra, 166, 213–215.