1 Corinthians 11:4-6

“Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head. 5. But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head: for that is even all one as if she were shaven. 6. For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered.” Chrysostom has concluded from 1 Corinthians 11:4, as Edwards also does, that the men too, at Corinth, did violence to their proper dignity by being covered. But it is not probable that abuses arose in that direction, especially in Greece (see above, p. 104). The demeanour which becomes the man is only mentioned to bring out by contrast that which alone is becoming in the woman.

The two acts of prophesying and praying will be again brought together in chap. 14, where we shall speak of them more specially Let us only say here, that in chap. 14 (comp. especially 1 Corinthians 11:14-17) prayer is more or less identified with speaking in a tongue, a gift which is treated conjointly with prophecy. This observation leads us to suppose, as Baur has already done, that by the prayer of which Paul speaks, in our 1 Corinthians 11:4-5, he means chiefly a prayer in a tongue, that is to say, in ecstatic language. The phrase κατὰ κεφ. ἔχειν is elliptical: “having down from the head,” that is to say, wearing a kerchief in the form of a veil coming down from the head over the shoulders.

In the last words: dishonoureth her head, the word head has often been understood literally (Erasmus, Beza, Bengel, Neander, Meyer, etc.): By veiling the head made to appear uncovered, he covers it with shame. But why in this case prefix to 1 Corinthians 11:4 the reflection of 1 Corinthians 11:3: “The head of every man is Christ”? If this remark had a purpose, it should be to prepare for the idea of 1 Corinthians 11:4, and consequently to justify the application of the term head to Christ Himself; which does not prevent us from holding, with many critics, that there is here a delicately intended play on words: “By dishonouring his own head, the believer, who covers himself, dishonours Christ also, whose glory he ought to be.” Indeed, as Holsten says, every man who, in performing a religious act, covers his head, thereby acknowledges himself dependent on some earthly head other than his heavenly head, and thereby takes from the latter the honour which accrues to Him as the head of man. The head uncovered, the brow open and radiant, the look uplifted and confident, the noble covering of hair, like, as some one has said, “to a crown of extinct rays,” such are the insignia of the king of nature, who has no other head in the universe than the invisible Lord of all. If, then, he is not to impair the honour of his Lord, he must respect himself by not covering his head.