Blessed Hope Bible-Presbyterian Church
500 Upper Bukit Timah Rd, Singapore 678106
He urged the Corinthian Christians to be willing to objectively judge for themselves by a rhetorical question that begs a negative answer. It is not proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered. It was a custom at that time for woman entering into God’s presence veiled. It was a mark of propriety and modesty for the woman to be veiled.
The Apostle Paul exhorts the man to see the mutual dependence between the man and the woman and warns him not to be puffed up because of the prominence that God places upon him because he was created first. The man is in need of the woman’s help as much as the woman is in need of the man’s help. They are the useful one to the other. This is God’s creative order too.
William MacDonald observed well, “Because of her position of subordination to man, the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head. The symbol of authority is the head-covering and here it indicates not her own authority but subjection to the authority of her husband.”
The Apostle Paul reiterates the creation account for our learning that God created the woman out of the rib of Adam as a companion because he was lonely. As such, the emphasis is on the headship of the man in the creative order.
The custom of covering the head signifies one who is in subjection. This is contrary to what a man ought to be as Matthew Poole puts it well, “to uphold the power, pre-eminence, and authority with which God hath invested him.”
God made man to own the headship of His creation – Genesis 1:26-28 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
William Macdonald observed well, “In verses 7–10, Paul teaches the subordination of the woman to the man by going back to creation. This should forever lay to rest any idea that his teaching about women’s covering was what was culturally suitable in his day but not applicable to us today. The headship of man and the subjection of woman have been God’s order from the very beginning.”
It is observed well, “In Paul’s day, a woman should cover her head. If she failed to do this, she dishonoured not only her own head but also showed disrespect to her husband. She ought to have respected her husband by wearing a head covering in public…We must consider these words in the cultural context of first-century Corinth.” [Hendricksen] Amen
William MacDonald observed insightfully, “Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonours his head, that is, Christ. It is saying, in effect, that the man does not acknowledge Christ as his head. Thus it is an act of gross disrespect.”
John Gill observed well, “Christ is the head of every individual human nature, as he is the Creator and Preserver of all men, and the donor of all the gifts of nature to them; of the light of nature, of reason, and of all the rational powers and faculties; He is the head of nature to all men, as He is of grace to His own people: and so He is as the Governor of all the nations of the earth, who whether they will or no are subject to Him; and one day every knee shall bow to Him, and every tongue confess that He is the Lord of all.”
William MacDonald said well, “Paul now introduces the subject of women’s head coverings. Behind his instruction is the fact that every ordered society is built on two pillars — authority and subjection to that authority. It is impossible to have a well-functioning community where these two principles are not observed.”