Biblion Bible Commentary
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Head and Covering
1 Corinthians 11:1-6
1 Be imitators of me, even as I also am of Christ. · WEB
The passage regulates how women pray and prophesy — never whether — and resolves into a principle that stands and a form that belonged to Corinth's world.
Be imitators of me, even as I also am of Christ. Now I praise you, brothers, that you remember me in all things, and hold firm the traditions, even as I delivered them to you 1 Corinthians 11:1–2.
The imitation is qualified in the same breath — even as I also am of Christ — so the pattern never terminates on Paul. And the praise is genuine: on this matter they had kept what he handed down, which is worth noting because he will withhold praise sharply a few verses later 1 Corinthians 11:17.
But I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God 1 Corinthians 11:3.
A three-part sequence, and the third clause governs how the second may be read. Whatever head means here, it must be a sense in which God is head of Christ — and the letter has already said the Son is the one through whom are all things 1 Corinthians 8:6, and will say that he hands the kingdom to the Father at the end 1 Corinthians 15:28. So the term cannot carry any suggestion of lesser being; within the Godhead it describes relation and order, not inequality of nature, and that is the sense available for the middle clause.
Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonors his head. But every woman praying or prophesying with her head uncovered dishonors her head 1 Corinthians 11:4–5.
The premise inside the instruction is easily passed over: women pray and prophesy in this assembly. Paul is not debating whether they do; he is regulating how, which means the practice was established and unremarkable — and the letter has already said the Spirit distributes prophecy to each one as he wills 1 Corinthians 12:11.
What, then, is actually being required? In first-century Corinth a woman's covered head was the public language of respectability and marital propriety; an uncovered head in public made a statement, and a shorn one carried disgrace 1 Corinthians 11:5–6. The instruction takes that existing social language as given and asks that worship not become the place where it is defied. Some women were evidently using their gift as a declaration of independence; Paul's answer is that the gift is not a license to erase, in public worship, the distinction between man and woman that God made at creation.
Read so, the passage resolves into a principle and a form. The principle — what is done in worship signifies, the sexes do not signify identically, and neither may use the assembly to display independence of the other — is grounded where Paul grounds it, in creation and in the Lord 1 Corinthians 11:8–12, and it does not expire. The form — the covering itself — is the first-century garment of that principle, and the passage's own close treats it as such, ending on what is appropriate, on nature, and finally on the custom of the churches rather than on a command 1 Corinthians 11:13–16. Where the sign no longer says what it said in Corinth, the principle still stands, and finds other clothing.
held with reason What this mark means