1st Corinthians Chapter 11 verse 10 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 10. - To have power on her head. A great deal of irrelevant guesswork has been written on this verse. Under this head must be classed the idle attempts to twist the word exousia, power, or authority, into some other reading - an attempt which may be set aside, because it is not sanctioned by a single manuscript. We may also dismiss the futile efforts to make exousia have any other primary meaning than "authority." The context shows that the word has here a secondary sense, and implies some kind of covering. The verse, therefore, points the same lessons as Genesis 24:64, 65. This much may be regarded as certain, and this view is adopted by the steadfast good sense of our English translators, both in the Authorized and Revised Versions. The only question worth asking is why the word exousia had come at Corinth, or in the Corinthian Church, to be used for "a veil," or "covering." The simplest answer is that just as the word "kingdom" in Greek may be used for "a crown" (comp. regno as the name of the pope's tiara), so "authority" may mean "a sign of authority" (Revised Version), or "a covering, in sign that she is under the power of her husband" (Authorized Version, margin). The margin of the Revised Version, "authority over her head," is a strange suggestion. Some have explained the word of her own true authority, which consists in accepting the rule of her husband; but it probably moans a sign of her husband's authority over her. Similarly the traveller Chardin says that in Persia the women wear a veil, in sign that they are "under subjection." If so, the best comment on the word may be found in the exquisite lines of Milton, which illustrate the passage in other ways also - "She, as a vei1, down to the slender waistHer unadorned golden tresses wore...As the vine curves her tendrils, which impliedSubjection, but required with gentle sway,And by her yielded, by him best received." The fact that Callistratus twice uses exousia of "abundance of hair" is probably a mere coincidence, resembling the Irish expression "a power of hair." Nor can there be any allusion to the isolated fact that Samson's strength lay in his hair. The very brief comment of Luther sums up all the best of the many pages which have been written on the subject. He says that exousia means "the veil or covering, by which one may see that she is under her husband's authority" (Genesis 3:16). Because of the angels. In this clause also we must set aside, as idle waste of time, the attempts to alter the text, or to twist the plain words into impossible meanings. The word "angels" cannot mean "Church officials," or "holy men," or "prophets," or "delegates," or "'bridegroom's men," or anything but angels. Nor can the verse mean, as Bengel supposes, that women are to veil themselves because the angels do so (Isaiah 6:2), or (as Augustine says) because the angels approve of it. The only question is whether the allusion is to good or bad angels. In favour of the latter view is the universal tradition among the Jews that the angels fell by lust for mortal women, which was the Jewish way of interpreting Genesis 6:1, 2. This is the view of Tertullian ('De Virg. Vel.,' 7) in writing on this subject. A woman, in the opinion and traditions of Oriental Jews, is liable to injury from the shedim, if she appears in public unveiled; and these evil spirits are supposed to delight in the appearance of unveiled women. The objection to this view, that angeloi alone is never used of evil but always of good angels, is not perhaps decisive (see 1 Corinthians 6:3). The verse may, however, mean (in accordance with the Jewish belief of those days) that good angels, being under the possibility of falling from the same cause as their evil brethren, fly away at once from the presence of unveiled women. Thus Khadijah tested that the visitant of her husband Mohammed really was the angel Gabriel, because he disappeared the moment she unveiled her head. On the whole, however, the meaning seems to be, out of respect and reverence for the holy angels, who are always invisibly present in the Christian assemblies. (On this point, see Luke 15:10; Ephesians 3:10; Hebrews 1:14; Hebrews 12:1; Ecclesiastes 5:6; Psalm 138:1 [LXX.]; Tobit 12:12. See Latimer's 'Sermons,' p. 253). "Reverence the angels" is St. Chrysostom's remark.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(10) For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head.--The two clauses which compose this verse are, perhaps, the two most difficult passages in the New Testament, and, accordingly, have given rise to an almost endless variety of interpretation. What is meant, first, by the woman having "power on her head?"1. There have been many--some of them most fanciful--suggestions that the word for power (exousia) may have crept in instead of some other word by the mistake of some copyist; or that the word used by St. Paul may have been exiousa--"When she goes out in public;" or two words (ex ousias)--"in accordance with her nature." All explanations, however, which require an alteration in the Greek text of the passage must be set aside, for (1) there is no MS. evidence whatever to support any other reading than the ordinary one, exousian; and (2) any alteration of a difficult or unusual word would have been naturally into a word that would simplify the passage--whereas here, if alteration has taken place, it has been to insert a word which has increased the obscurity of a difficult passage.2. It has been maintained that the word exousia here means the sign of power, i.e., a veil, which is the symbol of the husband's power over the wife. The fatal objection to this view, however, is that exousia expresses our own power, and not the power exercised by another over us. It is a word frequently used by St. Paul in this sense. (See 1Corinthians 8:9; 1Corinthians 9:4-5; 1Corinthians 9:12; 1Corinthians 9:18.) Whatever interpretation, therefore, we put upon this passage, it must be consistent with this word being interpreted as meaning some "power" which the woman herself has, and not some power exercised over her by her husband.Most commentators have quoted a passage from Diodorus Sic. i. 47, in which the Greek word "kingdom" (basileia) is used to signify "crown," as an illustration of the use of the word indicating the thing symbolised for the symbol itself. The parallelism between that use of the word kingdom, and the use here of the word "power," has been very positively denied (Stanley and others), on the ground that the "use of the name of the thing signified for the symbol, though natural when the power spoken of belongs to the person, would be unnatural when applied to the power exercised over that person by some one else." But the parallelism will hold good if we can refer the "power" here to some symbol of a power which belongs to the woman herself. . . .