---

1 Corinthians 6:16b echoes the 2nd chapter of Genesis in proclaiming that two will become one flesh.

1 Corinthians 11:5 contrasts 11:4 in offering instruction unto women to pray or prophesy with their heads uncovered. It contrasts because in 11:4 men are extorted never to pray or prophesy with their heads covered.

It is not difficult to hear someone offer their opinion stating that due to this juxtapositioning from 1 Corinthians 11, verses 4 and 5, that the bible is making indication toward the required gender for speaking in church.

God shows us in our lives, or at least our personal ones and those of many around us, that men are in great need of their wives. Yes, my time with things that are broken is often spent fixing them, and successfully; however, my wife's record of breaking things is far lower than mine. My fix record may outweigh my break record, but my wife is generally right more often; thusly, she has fewer...mistakes.

So if one were speaking anywhere, church or otherwise, head covering or otherwise, the wife of one's youth, the great gift of a partner should be there as well. And of course, this isn't to mean standing up and interrupting a spouse's sermon with a trite difference of opinion, rather, speaking for the spouse in the church as if one with the spouse

The parables and mystery of the bible are difficult to unravel. But the author was immediately stricken to take note of an odd and interesting intersection of these logics. Could it be a divine notion that because men need women, and women need men (wait for it), men should not be speaking (erg. living and interacting with others in society, church society, or in the home) without having been uncovered (the rib removed and transformed into one's spouse), and then the woman being covered (by receiving the gift of having been given to one person.

For a single flesh to operate without a part, is for an incomplete device to suffer malfunction and eventual kernel panic. Wait, that doesn't apply.

Let the women speak in church before something gets broken; please, then the men will be uncovered, the woman will keep them straight. But also be sure there is a man to stand up for that uncovered woman, then she, in-turn, is covered by the man protecting her. Circumcised or uncircumcised, covered or uncovered, Jesus loves the little children.

For purely non-spiritual theological discussions on 11:5, note this excerpt from my HCSB Translation.

Paul explains why a Corinthian woman's uncovered head dishonored her head. A woman who prayed or prophesied with her head uncovered was one and the same with the one having her head shaved. Paul equated teh shame of a "head uncovered" [imitating the practice in pagan private religious clubs; with the shame of a person who publicly expressed pagan dedication [i.e., to have her hair cut off or her head shaved]. Pagan women at Corinth sometimes sheared their hair and dedicated their locks as a token of worship or fulfillment of a vow to a god. In the Corinthian setting, the "uncovered head" paralleled practices in pagan clubs and thus blurred the divisions between devotion to the true God and false gods, resulting in dishonor to a believing woman's husband and to Christ.

Which brings us full circle to this being a matter of having a functioning husband and wife device: a single but complex component that is both left and right, good and right, handy and careful. Then the couple is covered by the very juxtaposition that in the beginning, seemingly, appeared bewildering.

Last Updated: 2014-07-25 12:04:31