What Does 1 Corinthians 11:6 Mean?
For if the woman is not covered, let her also be shorn; but if it is a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaved, let her be covered.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered.THE KEY
The Greek word for covering shares a root with unveiling, holding concealment and disclosure together in one word-family.
THE MEANING
The verse links an uncovered woman with shorn hair, then names shearing or shaving as shameful and closes with covering. For you now, it makes a visible covering consequential: within this line, an uncovered head is not treated as neutral.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that refusing a covering leaves the same public appearance untouched: the verse carries that refusal toward shearing, which it calls shameful.
THE ROOT
κατακαλύπτεται
katakalyptetai
GROWS FROM
καλύπτ-
kalypt-
to cover, conceal
English gives one simple state, “covered,” but the Greek verb belongs to a family that also names a veil and its unveiling. The root does not erase the bodily covering in this verse; it lets covering and disclosure remain connected movements in the word itself.
ALSO GROWS
kalymma: veil, covering
κάλυμμα
This noun names a covering from the same root family, making the verse’s image of covering part of a wider Greek vocabulary of veils.
apokalypsis: unveiling, revelation
ἀποκάλυψις
The same root appears in a word for unveiling, so the language links what conceals with what is disclosed.
THE PATTERN
A covering marks what is exposed, and changing that covering changes what can be seen.
And the eyes of them both were opened, and they perceived that they were bare, and they sewed fig leaves together, and made for themselves waistcloths.And when Moses finished speaking with them, he set a veil upon his face.But whenever it turns to the LORD, the covering is lifted off.THE THREAD
But whenever it turns to the LORD, the covering is lifted off.“Vail” belongs to the same Greek root family as the covering verb here. The two verses hold the image in opposite directions: this verse speaks of covering, while the other speaks of a veil being taken away when one turns toward the Lord.
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