A while back I wrote about hair & head coverings in 1 Corinthians 11, so I should have anticipated the question. A reader thanked me and then asked the question we’d all love to know the answer to: “Why angels are distracted?” Here is the relevant section.

⁷ A man ought not to cover his head,^[b] since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. ⁸ For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; ⁹ neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. ¹⁰ It is for this reason that a woman ought to have authority over her own^[c] head, because of the angels. ¹¹ Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. ¹² For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God.

1 Corinthians 11:7-12

So why exactly are the angels concerned by headwear, or the lack thereof, of women in the church? Or conversely of the men covering theirs (1 Cor 11:4). They must generally be very distressed every Sunday right? So let’s look at what some of the experts have said to see if they can shed any light. Some like Veryln Verbrugge think we just can’t know: “The most we can say with certainty is that the Corinthians likely know what Paul is alluding to here, but we do not.”((Longman, Tremper, and David E Garland. The Expositor’s Bible Commentary. 11, 11, 2011.))

That hasn’t stopped everyone else from having a crack at the mystery. There are three main reasons: sex, order & authority.

A thread in this section sees a connection between hair and sexuality. So Craig Keener says, “The only gender-differentiated covering custom (in Roman but not Greek culture), however, was a sign of sexual modesty, intrinsic to a woman’s honour. Some viewed a wife’s hair like a private part (see 1 Cor 12:23). Far to the east and in Arabia, modest wives might wear even face veils, as in some Islamic countries today; in Jerusalem, Tarsus, and for some of the women in Corinth, it sufficed to cover the hair, the most prized potentially public object of male desire.”((Keener, Craig. 1–2 Corinthians. Cambridge  UK ;;New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.))

And if you don’t think hair had that kind of power, just watch this scene with Rita Hayworth from the movie The Shawshank Redemption (NB: One swear word in the sequence).

So some interpreters, like Tertullian, took this theme of sexuality and link the angels of verse 10 with ‘the sons of God’ in Genesis 6:1-4 who were tempted by women. The idea that holy angels can be brought down by women has, I think, all sorts of problems but surely the biggest one is that this explanation is ruled out by Jesus in Matthew 22:30. Here, in another verse that can confuse, Jesus says in the resurrection we will be like the angels and therefore not given in marriage. Angels then are not the sort to get unduly hot under the collar (or anywhere else for that matter) by a swish of beautiful locks.

The second reason concerns order. It is one of the key concerns Paul has for the church in Corinth. Time and again he seeks to bring order to what was, in his view, clearly chaotic, disordered and therefore dishonouring. As Margaret Thrall((Thrall, Margaret. The First and Second Letters of Paul to the Corinthians. Cambridge  [Eng.]: University Press, 1965. p80)) says, “Here the angels are thought of as the guardians of the world God has created, concerned to see that his laws are obeyed, and offended, therefore, by any action which disregards them.”

So Thiselton concludes, “Among the Jewish traditions which find their way into the NT, those in which angels are perceived as “guardians of order” as well as “participants in the church’s praise to God” provide the best clue to Paul’s meaning.”((Thiselton, Anthony C. The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2007.))

The third option relates to authority and specifically the authority to share prophecy in the church. The more patriarchal elements would argue that a woman must have a head covering as a sign of her husband’s authority. Some thought angels were the mediators of the divine word (like Gabriel for example) and therefore it was important that a divine message had divine authority.

My own thinking is that some synthesis of all three options is actually closer to what Paul is getting at here. How we present ourselves clearly can send sexual signals. Clothing for the bedroom shouldn’t be the same as that for the pulpit for example. Paul’s comments about shaved or short haired women in Corinth does seem to indicate that this was sending mixed cultural messages. But I think it also has something to do with order because Paul also mentions men’s hairstyles (1 Cor 11:14) and that seems to indicate another confusing message. In other words that men were looking like women and vice versa. Therefore if we are to speak God’s words to God’s people then we should all be under God’s authority – to do so means taking note of God’s creation. Men identifiable as men and women identifiable as women. To not do so would be to dishonour God while claiming we speak for God and that is enough to upset an angel, and well we wouldn’t want to do that.