1 & 2 Corinthians

1 and 2 Corinthians are two letters written by the apostle Paul to the church in the busy city of Corinth. Since its planting though, something had gone wrong and members of the church were falling back into their sinful ways. As its founder and spiritual father, Paul writes to them to show them their errors and how to remedy them. Also, he gives them useful instruction on how to pursue God and live righteously.

In the course of his first letter, Paul talks about the roles of men and women in relation to one another. He says that just the man is the head of the woman as Chris is of the head of the man. Then he proceeds to discuss the appropriate ways that men and women ought to pray. Interestingly, the apostle says that men must have their heads uncovered while women must have their covered. The reason he gives is because women were originally made for men and “[for] this reason the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels,” (1 Corinthians 11:10).

So, most of this verse makes sense to me, but the last half seems unrelated. What do the angels have to do with man’s authority over women? I think it might be because angels are guardians and thus may be representative of those they guard. Like how members of a family can be recognized by their family’s crest or colors, perhaps the angels have a similar distinction for those they guard. I don’t know if this makes much sense, but I’d like to know why it would say that women ought to have a symbol of authority on their heads during prayer because of the angels.