This is a view held
by many, especially those who would allow women to take an
individual audible part in Christian gatherings.
The Greek word for
speak in v35 is
laleo, a word which is always used of serious speaking in the NT and
never, as in classical Greek, of mere chatter or whispering. What is
important is not how the Greeks used it some centuries before but
how the Holy Spirit uses it in the Scriptures. In chapter 14
laleo is used 24 times and
means to speak audibly. It
is used of God (1 Cor. 14: 21) and God clearly never chatters! But
some may ask why the related word
lego is not used. The word
lego is more specific than
laleo and involves the
connected sense of the words and thus their intelligent meaning,
whereas laleo may refer
only to the words spoken, or the fact that someone is speaking. Many
of occasions laleo is used
in this passage refer to speaking with tongues where the speakers
may not have understood what they were saying, and if there was no
interpreter, those who heard them would not have understood them
either. Hence laleo is the
more appropriate word. When the content and meaning of what is said
is important, then lego is
used in the passage (as in “sayest” in v16, “saith” in v21, and
“says” in v34).
Again, the word for “be silent” (v34) in relation to
the woman is the same as that used in vs 28, 30. In the latter case
a man is speaking but another has a revelation made to him and the
first is to be silent, that is,
to stop speaking—certainly
not to stop chattering!
Many Bible commentaries restrict
headship, and thus subjection on the part of the woman, to the
marriage relationship. They would say that 1 Cor. 14: 34, 35 is
restricted to wives and this appears to be supported by the words
“as the law also says” which may be a reference to Gen 3: 16: “and
to thy husband shall be thy desire, and he shall rule over thee”. In
order to support their view on headship, they would argue that here
and in certain other passages (1 Cor. 11: 1–16; 1 Tim. 2: 8–15) the
words aner and
gune should be translated
husband and
wife respectively and not man
and woman. Now
aner can mean either man
or husband and
gune can mean either woman
or wife. The context alone
is the deciding factor as to the correct English translation. Let us put this to the test in 1 Cor. 11: 1–16, the great passage
on headship.
If you read the passage, replacing the words
man and
woman with
husband and wife, you will
soon see how confusing such a translation becomes. In v8 confusion
changes to nonsense.
It is absurd to read this verse as ‘For [the] husband is not of
[the] wife, but [the] wife of [the] husband’, when the clear
reference is to the creation of the woman
through being
taken out of the man. The
reference is “this shall be called Woman, because this was taken out
of a man” (Gen. 2: 23). A wife was never taken out of a husband
because Adam
could not be a husband until
Eve existed! 1 Cor. 11: 8 can thus only be translated as
“For man is not of woman, but woman of man” and likewise throughout
the section the words must be
man and woman and not
husband and
wife. Hence the headship in 1 Cor. 11 is not limited to husbands and
wives but applies to men and women
as such.
Let us now limit the prohibition of 1 Cor. 14: 34, 35 to wives and
see how this interpretation fares. Unmarried women or widows would
thus be allowed to speak without shame or overstepping the
boundaries of subjection. If that were the case, then a woman
unmarried last week could speak, but married this week is prohibited
from doing so! Furthermore, as it is those that are younger that
would generally be the unmarried ones, we would have the more
experienced married women having to listen to the relatively
inexperienced unmarried women! Again, if this prohibition were
limited to wives speaking in assembly, it is so severe that even
asking a question is considered a shame (see v35). How is it that a
wife asking a question of her own husband at home is acceptable but
in the assembly is considered to be in insubjection?
Thus the prohibition of these two verses, while certainly applying
to wives, is for all women simply because headship is not restricted
to marriage.
Finally, we should note that the
apostle concludes this section of Scripture with the warning that
“the things that I write to you, that it is [the] Lord’s
commandment” (v37). The singular verb (“is”) showing that what he
wrote in its entirety is the
Lord’s commandment. We cannot pick and choose in the Word of God.
