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The apostle is still thinking of the public services of the Church.

I. THE WOMAN IS FORBIDDEN TO TEACH OR PREACH IN THE CHURCH. "Let a woman learn in silence in all subjection. But I permit not a woman to teach, nor to lord it over the man, but to be in silence." This injunction has a threefold relation - first to herself, then to her husband, then to the Church.

1. She is to learn in silence. This duty concerns herself. She is to be a learner, not a teacher. She is to give all devout attention to the public instruction, so as to learn more and more of Christ and his gospel. And if what she heard was either difficult or doubtful, she was to ask her husband at home (1 Corinthians 14:34); and, in case of his inability to meet her difficulties, she could resort privately to the authorized teachers of the Church. This learning attitude was to be "in all subjection" both to her husband and to the rulers of the Church. Yet it did not imply that she was to accept false teaching, or forego her just right to prove all things and reject what was unsound.

2. She is not to lord it over the man. As teaching or preaching is the act of those in authority, her assumption of this function would imply a lordship over her husband. Husband and wife are "heirs together of the grace of life," but the gospel has not exalted woman to a position of authority over her husband.

3. She is not to teach in the Church.

(1) This injunction of the apostle does not forbid her teaching privately, either her children, as Timothy was taught by his mother, or her servants, or the younger women (Titus 2:4), or even her husband privately on fit occasions, or even strangers, as Priscilla taught Apollos (Acts 18:26).

(2) It forbids her teaching in public.

(a) It is suggestive that the words usually translated in the New Testament "to preach" (κηρύσσω εὐαγγελίζω, καταγγέλλω) are not used in connection with this prohibition, as if women were merely forbidden to preach, but still allowed to teach. The word used here is "to teach" (διδάσκω), and the word used in 1 Corinthians 14. (λαλέω) - "to talk, chatter, babble" - is even more comprehensive. These words all include preaching as the greater includes the less; therefore preaching is also forbidden to women.

(b) Prophesying was forbidden to women as well as teaching. This was a supernatural gift enjoyed both by men and women in the primitive Church, but is not enjoyed now by either men or women. It is never in the New Testament used for preaching, or for mere speaking in meeting. But were there not women who prophesied in the Corinthian Church? (1 Corinthians 11:4, 5.) (α) The gift of prophecy being connected with the gift of tongues, and both being now obsolete, the title of women to the exercise of such a gift in this age utterly fails. (β) The apostle, in his discussion concerning prophecy and the gift of tongues, forbids women to speak at all in the Churches (1 Corinthians 14.). It was in the very midst of his injunctions respecting the use of supernatural gifts that he says, "As in all Churches of the saints, let your women keep silence in the Churches, for it is not; permitted to them to speak... for it is a shame for women to speak in the Churches." Prophesying as well as preaching is forbidden to women. (γ) Much unnecessary difficulty has been caused by the passage respecting "a woman praying or prophesying with her head uncovered" (1 Corinthians 11:5). The apostle seems for the time to allow the practice, while he condemns the manner of its performance; but afterwards he forbids the practice itself. In the earlier passage he rebukes merely the indecency of an existing custom, and then in the later he forbids the custom itself. Calvin says, "By condemning the one he does not commend the other." You cannot regard as of equal authority a practice and a command, both explicit and repeated, which destroys the practice. (δ) "But these directions were given to Greek Churches, and cannot apply to the women of our day." We answer that they apply to all Churches; for the apostle says, "As in all Churches of the saints, let your women keep silence in the Churches." The reasons given for the prohibition prove that it has nothing to do with usages, or customs, or times, or races.

II. THE REASON OR GROUND OF THE APOSTLE'S PROHIBITION. It is to be found in the original law of the relation of woman to man.

1. Man's headship in creation. "For Adam was first formed, then Eve." Man's priority of creation is the first reason, but it is to be taken together with the statement in 1 Corinthians 11:8, 9, "For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man; for also the man was not made for the sake of the woman, but the woman for the sake of the man." Besides, as "the Head of every man is Christ, the head of the woman is the man" (1 Corinthians 11:3). "The husband is the head of the wife" (Ephesians 5:23). The woman, therefore, stands under law to her husband, and therefore any attempt on her part to assume the part of head or guide is to overturn the primal order of creation.

2. Woman's priority in transgression. "And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being altogether deceived fell into transgression." They both sinned; but Adam was not deceived, for he fully understood the sin he was committing when he yielded to the persuasiveness of his wife.

(1) This reference implies the truly historical character of the narrative in Genesis. It is no myth or legend. The fall of man is an historic fact of the greatest importance, for it grounds the doctrine of original sin, without which human nature, says Pascal, is an inexplicable riddle.

(2) The deception was practiced upon Eve, not upon Adam, for she confessed that the serpent beguiled her.

(3) This facility of deception on her part seems to suggest to the apostle her inferiority to man in strength of intellect, and the consequent wrongness of allowing to woman an intellectual supremacy over man.

III. THE BLESSING UPON WOMAN STANDING WITHIN HER TRUE SPHERE. "But she shall be saved through the child-bearing, if they abide in faith and love and holiness with sobriety."

1. It is here implied if, at woman is to find her right sphere in the relations of motherhood. The change of number implies that Eve is here to be regarded as the representative of her sex. Her sphere is in the home life; her destiny lies in the faithful discharge of its duties. Eve was to be the mother of all living; it was to be through the seed thus given her that the curse was to be lifted off the world, and the head of the serpent bruised. There is an evident allusion in "the child-bearing" to the Incarnation, but it points likewise to the collective seed associated with Christ.

2. It implies that women are not saved, as Roman Catholics contend, by mere childbearing, so that a woman dying in her travail is necessarily saved, for the apostle links with it certain spiritual qualifications as necessary to salvation.

(1) Faith - implicitly resting in the Divine promise and upon the Divine Redeemer, "as the seed of the woman;"

(2) love, as the inspiration of all her wifely and motherly duties;

(3) holiness, as implying purity of life, circumspectness of walk, and devotedness to God;

(4) with sobriety, as marking the self-effacing, self-restraining, self-governing spirit which she is to carry into all the conditions of her life as a Christian mother. T.C.

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KJV: Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.

WEB: Let a woman learn in quietness with all subjection.