LNE

Hi Cheryl,

I realize this is an old post and I’m dragging it back out, but I’m doing research for a study of 1 Cor 11:1-16 and I’m a little confused about something you said here. If you have time, since I know you are busy and are dealing with Calvinism on your other blog, it would be great to hear from you.

My conundrum is, that you say that 1 Cor 11:6 is Paul telling a woman that if she is not covering her head (present tense), she is also merely allowed to have her hair cut off. (aorist tense); but “[also] let her hair be cut off” is an imperative command, like “[also] she should/must have her hair cut off”.

How is it proper to render this imperative verb as merely permission to have her hair shaved, as if it said “If a woman is not covering her head, let her also be permitted [but not commanded] to have her hair cut off”, and not as a command to have her head shaved (seemingly as a punishment for shaming her head [man] by not covering her physical head)?

It seems like Paul is saying that if a woman does not cover herself and shames her head, then to show her disgrace further Paul commands her to have her head shaven; but if being shaved is a shame, then she should cover her head. So in essence he is demanding a woman cover her head, since not covered=shaven and an uncovered woman should also be shaven (because she is being rebellious against the command to cover), but if her shaven head was shameful, (it was according to Paul) then she must cover her head.

Slightly off-topic tangent:
I think that perhaps the “bitter water” ritual of Num 5:18, where an accused adulteress’ head was “uncovered” (Philo quoted this passage using the same Greek word used for “uncovered” in 1 Cor 11:5, 13) may be why an uncovered head was considered shameful to a woman’s husband (it was a symbol of possible adultery). In Dr. Payne’s book (Man and Woman, One in Christ), on pages 172-173, he says (quoting Wallace) that the imperatives of verse 6 are stronger than mere options, and place requirements on the individual.
Payne believes that “uncovered” means “with hair hanging loose, hair let down” based in part on the evidence of Lev 13:45 (in the LXX), the only other place where the word for “uncovered” used in 1 Cor 11:5 and 13 appears in the LXX. In the Hebrew text of Lev 13:45, the word translated as “uncovered” in the LXX is said to mean “hair let loose or unbound”, and is also the Hebrew word used of the accused adulteress of Num 5:18.

He believes, based on historical evidence about what was shameful in the culture of Paul’s day, that the “covered” head of the man is long effeminate hair which Paul says is disgraceful for a man to have “down from the head” (since Payne says there is insufficient evidence to say that a cloth covering was shameful to a man, and he takes 1 Cor 11:14 as a rhetorical question like most people seem to, rather than a statement negating the idea that a man’s long hair is a shame, and that a woman’s long hair is her glory, because it is her covering), and the uncovered head of the woman was her long hair let down or unrestrained by bands or something like that (Payne says she was to wear her long glorious hair “as/for a covering”, which means to put it up and cover the head with it as a wrap. He also says there is little evidence that a Greek or Roman woman would commonly wear a veil, or that it was a shame if she didn’t.
Payne does say that most of the artwork from the time of Paul shows respectable women with their hair “done up”, but not usually veiled.). In addition, in 1 Pet 3:3 and 1 Tim 2:9, women are told not to wear braided hair and gold (perhaps better rendered plaited hair with gold put in it) twice, once by Paul and once by Peter. It would be kind of strange to tell women not to wear certain hairstyles if their hair was entirely covered by a cloth veil.
Whether he is right or not, I have reservations, but regardless of what the “covering” is, my question is still whether a woman is permitted to go without it, or is expressly told she must go all the way and have her head shaved if she doesn’t wear it, if being without it shames her head.