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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadWilliam Burkitt Notes and Observations - 1 Corinthians 11:4 - 11:4
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
By the man's praying and prophesying, understand his performing any divine offices in the church, as prayer, and expounding the scriptures, singing of psalms, and the like.
By doing this covered, understand not the natrual covering of the hair, but an artificial covering by a veil, after the manner of women, which is a token of subjection.
By dishonouring his head, understand either,
1. Christ, who in the former verse was called the head of every man. He that administers in the church in holy things represents Christ, who is the head of the church; therefore by covering the head he declares a subjection in his adminstration, and doth as it were make the church the head of Christ, instead of Christ's being the head of the church.
Or else, 2. By dishonouring the head, may be understood the minister's own head: he betrayed his superiority, and lesseneth the honour and dignity of his sex, by using such a gesture in divine offices, as is a token of inferiority and subjection; for in that country, at that time, it was a sign of subjection to have the head covered, but a sign of power and dominion to have the head uncovered.
The contrary is found with us at this day; for those that have power over others, now keep their heads covered, and those that are inferior to others, keep their heads uncovered before them, 1Co_11:5.
By the woman's praying and prophesying, is understood either prophesying extraordinarily, (which we read the women sometimes did both in the Old and New Testament, and were called prophetesses, Luk_2:36; Act_21:9.)
Or else, by the woman's prophesying, is to be understood praising God in hymns and psalms, They prophesied with harps, psalteries, and cymbals, giving thanks, and praising the Lord, 1Ch_25:1-3; where prophesying and praising the Lord are the same thing.
By the woman's prophesying with her head uncovered, to the dishonour of her head or husband, is to be understood her appearing unveiled in the church, open and barefaced in public; which was accounted,
1. An immodest, unbecoming, and unseemly guise.
2. Arrogant; her being unveiled and uncovered was a token of her usurping an undue authority over the man, and of her casting off that subjection which she was under by the law of her creation to him.
3. Superstitious; it being a fantastical imitation of the she-priests and prophetesses of the Gentiles when they served their idols, and particularly when they sacrificed to Bacchus, who used to have their faces uncovered, their hair dishevelled, hanging at its full length round about their ears.
Now the Corinthian women, in imitation of these heathen women, (for the female sex is very fond and exceeding prone to follow the fashion,) did cast off their veils, discovered their faces, dishonoured their heads, even their natural heads, (as well as their economical head, their husband,) it being then and there accounted as immodest a thing for a woman to appear in public uncovered, as to appear with her head shaven.
From the whole learn, That God requires at the hands of all persons, who either administer unto him, or stand before him, a decent behaviour and comely accommodation in his house, especially in the acts and exercises of his worship and service. For if in their habit and dress, surely much more in their gesture and deportment, doth he hate what is unseemly and unbecoming in any person.
Learn, 2. That it is especially the duty of persons employed in divine adminstrations to demean themselves as those who represent our Lord Jesus, managing themselves with a due authority and decent gravity, becoming the ambassadors of God.
So then it is a general obsrvation of decency in our outward behaviour, when worshipping God before others, which our apostle here recommends as a special duty.