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December 30, 2012 |
| Head Coverings | ||
The topic of head coverings for women has been a problem in the Christian church for a very long time. Groups like Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites and others require their women to wear head coverings. The foundation for this comes primarily from 1 Corinthians.
Outside these groups there is still a diversity of opinion on what to do with Paul's writings on this topic. Some interpreters believe that Paul's message is that women should wear head coverings such as scarves or shawls but it does not apply to our time. People who agree with this interpretation have a variety of reasons why it shouldn't apply to our time. But it's hard to think that the Holy Spirit would have Paul write such a message and ensure that it is preserved to our time if he was only addressing a local problem or cultural issue of that time.
Other interpreters believe that Paul's message was not that women should wear head coverings and the true message has been confused.
In this lesson we will look at the verses that relate to this topic to understand what Paul was saying and whether it applies to our time.
In many cases in Paul's epistles it appears that he is answering questions that have been brought to him. This topic appears to be one of those. But in no case does Paul begin by stating the question he is about to answer. Perhaps he sees no point because the epistle is addressed to the people who asked the question. Perhaps he thinks that all the churches have the same question and will understand what he is addressing. We cannot know for sure. But it seems obvious that Paul is addressing a question that the churches of our time do not understand.
Paul begins by giving the foundation for the topic he is about to discuss.
3 But I want you to know that the head of every man is The Messiah, and the head of the woman is the man, and the head of The Messiah is God.
Notice the way Paul uses the word 'head'. In his time one of the meanings for the word 'head' is 'a person who is in authority'. We don't use the word that way much anymore. But we do have 'department heads' and some similar usages.
We could rewrite the verse above to make it clearer to the reader of today. It could be:
I want you to know that the one in authority over every man is the Messiah, and the one in authority over the woman is the man, and the one in authority over the Messiah is God.
So we see that Paul is describing the levels of authority in the kingdom of God. These levels begin with God (the Father) who is at the top, then the Messiah (the Son), then all men, then the women they are responsible for. This should not be confused with the value of persons. Women and men are of equal value within Christian society, but they have different roles and with those roles different responsibilities.
Having described the levels of authority, Paul continues with a message for men
4 And every man who prays or prophesies while covering his head disgraces his head.
To understand what Paul is saying we need to recall how he used the word 'head' in verse 3. Paul uses the word 'head' in two different ways in this verse. It's a clever play on words but it can be confusing to us who don't use the words that way. In fact it is highly likely that he intends the second use of the word to have both meanings simultaneously. As I said - Very Clever. We could rewrite the verse this way.
And every man who prays or prophesies while covering his head disgraces himself and the one in authority over him.
From this we know that men are not to wear head coverings. But we are still unclear on what is meant by a head covering.
Now Paul presents the equivalent message for women
5 And every woman praying or prophesying, while revealing her head, disgraces her head, for she is equal with her whose head is shaven.
From this we know that women are not to reveal their heads. But we are still unclear on what is meant by revealing her head. But there is something else important here. Paul says that revealing her head makes a woman equal to a woman whose head is shaved. Keep that in mind.
6 For if a woman is not covered, she should also be sheared, but if it is a disgrace for a woman to be sheared or shaven, let her be covered.
Paul has now identified three groups of women.
Paul says that the first group is different from, but equal to, the other two groups in that they all disgrace themselves and the man in authority over them.
We are now going to jump ahead to verse 15 to better understand what it means for a woman to reveal her head.
15 And whenever a woman grows her hair, it is a glory to her, because her hair is given to her in place of a covering.
From this it is clear that the first of the three groups above does not include women who grow their hair. In fact it says their hair is given to them in place of a covering. Therefore hair is the covering. Therefore when Paul talks about a person's head he is referring to the head excluding the hair. When we speak today of a head we usually are referring to the whole head, including the hair.
These women "who grow their hair" adds a fourth group to our list.
This still leaves something of a mystery - who are the women in the first group. This is the group that Paul is addressing and is the group that he has been asked about. Unfortunately we do not have enough information to know. When we look around society today we can't think of anyone who fits that description. Perhaps these women were old and their hair was not growing or was patchy. Perhaps because of disease, or diet, or infestation they had lost some of their hair. Perhaps there was a hair style of the time that left part of the head exposed. We just can't know.
But we can understand the message that Paul is teaching. Women whose scalps are significantly exposed need to cover them. Today the possible causes of hair loss mentioned above are very rare but we can now add cancer treatment as a cause. And we see that women innately observe Paul's instructions; they choose to cover their heads. That is where Paul takes us next.
7 For a man ought not to cover his head, because he is the image and the glory of God, but a woman is the glory of Man. 8 For Man is not from Woman, but Woman is from Man. 9 For neither was Man created for the sake of Woman, but Woman for the sake of Man. 10 Because of this, a woman is obligated to have authority over her head, for the sake of the Angels.
Paul continues on here from where he left off with the line of authority that he started in verse 3. Because man was created in the image of God and given authority by God before woman existed, he is not to cover his head when praying or prophesying as a sign of that relationship. Women, however, are to be the glory of the man in authority over them. As stated in verse 15, a woman's hair is part of that glory. Therefore, Paul says, a woman is to exercise proper control over her head also for the sake of the angels who look down upon us.
We can extend Paul's point here to children and have a broader understanding as a result. I'm certain that Paul would say that children are the glory of both their parents.
11 However, a man is not without a woman, neither a woman without a man, in Our Lord. 12 Just as Woman is from Man, in this way also, a man is by a woman, but everything is from God.
Paul now says that, in our lord Jesus, men and women are not independent. Every woman came from a man, her father, and every man came from a woman, his mother. In God, we are all one people.
This is a reference back to what he said about the woman, Eve, coming from the man, Adam. His point is that God setup this hierarchy at creation but that does not mean woman are less than man, in God's eyes. The hierarchy is there to establish order.
Having used the Genesis creation account as support, Paul now appeals to the reader's own innate natural sense of what is right?
13 Judge among yourselves; is it right for a woman to pray to God while revealing her head? 14 Does not even nature teach you that when a man has grown his hair, it is a disgrace to him? 15 And whenever a woman grows her hair, it is a glory to her, because her hair is given to her in place of a covering.
Paul is really asking "what does your heart tell you?" When you see a man who has grown his hair to be as long as a woman's hair, does it not "feel" wrong to you? But is it also not obvious that the same length of hair is the glory of a woman? I think we can add the example I raised earlier. Is it not in the nature of a woman who loses her hair that she wants to cover her head?
Paul does not lay down a rule here on how short is too short for a woman and how long is too long for a man. I believe his intent is to say "Judge among yourselves."
It is worth mentioning here the Nazirite vow from Numbers 6. This was a vow that a man could take for a period of time or for life, as in the case of Samson. This was a vow that Paul also took for a period of time1. Part of the requirements for this vow was not to cut the hair.
16 But if a man disputes against these things, we have no such custom, neither does the church of God.
Paul now addresses those who disagree with his reasoning. In doing so he lays down a final line of reasoning. It isn't clear who the 'we' is but he may be referring to the apostles. He says that what he has said has always been the custom of the apostles and of the people of God.
By people of God or "church of God" he probably includes the Jews as this practice of covering or not covering heads was also theirs as well.
Few teachings by Paul are so widely despised as this one. All types of interpretive twists have been dreamed up to show that this teaching does not apply to modern Christians. One popular one is the "short-haired temple prostitute." The twist here is that Paul is actually talking about Christians not looking like temple prostitutes who, we are told, had very short-hair. There are obvious problems with that:
For men, Paul gives no guidance at all for how long is too long for hair length. For women, he does give examples of what length or condition is too short and needs to be dealt with. But even there he does not say how short is too short.
I believe this is intentional. This passage may seem like Paul's personal opinion being taught as Biblical. That is not the case. This is a spiritual matter. Paul bases it on Biblical order, though we might not fully understand it.
Therefore Paul has left a gray area for us to discern through the spirit. If a woman or man desires to be in the will of God, they will search themselves. They will ask questions like "why am I keeping my hair at this length?". Am I chasing after the fashions of the world? Am I envious of the role of the opposite sex?
When someone asks this they are really asking if Paul was teaching something different from what Jesus and Jews were doing.
So the first question is whether Jews of that time normally had long hair. We know that Jesus was not distinct from other Jews therefore, if Jews had long hair we would expect Jesus to have long hair.
Unfortunately, the Jews were commanded not to make statues or drawings of people so we have no historical evidence for their hair length. The Romans had no such restriction and there are many statues of Caesars and others with short hair.
That isn't conclusive about the hair length of Jews but it shows that major cultural groups who lived nearby had both the desire and ability to keep their hair short. The Bible makes no comment about the Romans being out-pf-place with their hair.
We know the ability to cut hair has always been around because mankind have been shearing sheep for about as long as there have been sheep. Sharp tools were also necessary for other tasks. Adam likely had some kind of knife in the garden for pruning.
The Bible makes very little comment about hair length, at all.
We know Samson had long hair for most of his life but he was a special case. He was under a Nazirite vow for most of his life. As part of that, his hair was not to be cut.
Absalom kept his fair fairly long, cutting it only once a year. This made him noteworthy - another exception. In fact his vainglorious about his hair seems to be a cautionary tale. It was his long hair that got him killed.
Elisha was bald and that was considered odd by a bunch of boys. That doesn't relate directly to our point but it is one of the few stories about hair length.
Jews keep their hair short in our time. That doesn't assure us that it has always been that way. That practice could have changed over time.
Probably the best evidence is that people who research this kind of thing are convinced that Jews kept their hair fairly short at that time and always have. Their evidence for this comes from extra-biblical writings by Jews.
That makes sense though. Hard work, military service, cleanliness, and other concerns made that the logical choice.
Knowing that just brings up another question - why Jesus is always depicted with long hair. There is no unity among scholars on this. The two most common answers to this and one of my own are:
This picture brings up the second part of our question - whether Jesus wore a head covering. Paul says men should not, as we saw, but modern Jews certainly do.
We know that priests wore turbans but that was because they were commanded to do so. That command did not apply to anyone else.
The Old Testament has a few references to people covering their heads. The verses imply the people who did so were covering their heads as a sign of mourning, not from any sense of obligation or piousness.
The earliest reference to a reason to wear a head covering comes from about 1100 A.D. in the Talmud (Rabbinic writings). Even there it appears as an option. It isn't clear from that text that there is a Biblical basis for it and it isn't clear when the head covering should be worn or who should wear it (women, gentiles, boys).
In Israel now, women have started wearing head coverings in an effort to be the same as men. As has happened with many things in Judaism, what began as an opinion by a single rabbi has morphed into a tradition and, in some groups, a law.
Altogether then, there is no reason to believe that Jesus, or any Jew of that time, wore a head covering. Nor is there a reason to believe he or they had long hair. This puts Paul's writing inline with his time.
This section of Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians has often confused people. Some of that confusion comes from a difficult text and poor translations and some from living in a much different world than Paul.
But I think we are now able to reconstruct the question that would have led Paul to write this response in 1 Corinthians. I think it would be:
Some of the women in our assembly have various problems that have resulted in missing hair and parts of their scalps show when they are praying. Many of the men say that this feels wrong to them. Those who were born and raised as Jews especially say this is wrong. But others say that these women cannot help the way they are and they should be accepted. They also say that we are free from the laws of the Jews so Jewish practices need not be followed. There are also men among us who have very long hair. This also feels wrong to some but others say we should accept it. What do you say, brother Paul?
In summary, with respect to praying or prophesying:
1. Men are not to cover their heads or keep their hair so long that it acts as a head covering
2. Women are to cover their heads or keep their hair long enough to act as a head covering
1 Acts 18:18