“It is disgraceful for women to speak in church.”
(1 Cor 14:35b, CEV)
We are currently examining 1 Cor 14:34, one of two Scriptures that leave the impression that Paul’s statement created a law in the New Covenant which decrees the nature of women’s spiritual functioning in public. The verse reads as follows -“Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak; but they are to be submissive, as the law also says. And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home.” In the following verse, which we just partially quoted, the woman who utters any word in the fellowship of believers is called “disgraceful”. What harsh treatment.
In the last teaching we pointed out how there were a large number of women who were very active in the home churches, as well as in the territorial churches; they were ministering to the congregations and thus had to speak. How then does one make sense of this seemingly inconsequent statement of Paul’s merely in the light of Eph 5:18-20 – where all believers are called up to speak “to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” – there is clearly a seeming contradiction. Also in Col 3:16 it is explicitly stated that the believers should be “admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord”. There is something about these Scriptures of Paul’s which we are clearly not understanding properly.
Added to this is the fact that the Scripture under discussion is particularly about married women. Verse 35 of 1 Cor 14 then states that “if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is shameful for women to speak in church.” Rightly one could then ask – what about the unmarried women? Should they not be taught? It obviously makes no logical sense, especially in the light 1 Cor 7:7-8, where the unmarried women and widows are strongly encouraged to make very sure if they should, in the first place, get married at all.
A large part of the problem of the interpretation of these two problematic verses is that we are often deceived into studying the Scriptures in isolation. What is clear when one studies the two verses within a wider context is that they are not about women, but about prophecy, speaking in tongues and the interpretation of it as prophetic word, and the order in which these things should take place within the church – this is the theme under discussion here!
In this light it is important to note that it is not only women who are asked to be quiet in verse 34; in verses 30 and 31 it is explicitly stated that others should also be quiet during the process in which prophetic word is brought forward, and judged. The core of this section is nestled in the spiritual principle which is spelled out in verse 32 – “And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets.” This merely means that not even God’s prophetic word may disrupt the order of the church. Let me give an example of this – In the first home church in which I was one of the elders, there was an older lady whom we all acknowledged as a prophet, and who attended one of our meetings. In the middle of a song, during the church’s worship time, she suddenly erupted into a prophetic word, delivered in tongues, and then continued to give the outcome of it, while the entire congregation abruptly stopped singing. Once there was silence she explained to the church that the Spirit of the Lord had suddenly descended on her, and that she had no control over herself, and had to give the word. Her behaviour may sound very spiritual, but it is unbiblical, on the grounds of verse 32 – “the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets”. The GNB-translation makes it very clear -“The gift of proclaiming God’s message should be under the speaker’s control …”. This lady was being disgraceful.
- Sela: Realize the importance of the last paragraph for your own life.
- Read: Lev 19-21
- Examine how this has been fulfilled: Lev 21:20 (Tip: Acts 8: 26-40)
