What does 1 Corinthians 14:35 mean?

Paul is describing ground rules for orderly worship services, including the use of speaking in tongues and prophecy. In the previous verse and this one, he also places restrictions on participation in the service by women. Earlier, Paul has indicated approval of women praying or prophesying in a service (1 Corinthians 11:2–16). His reference to being silent, then, has to apply to some particular context.

At least to some modern scholars, this implies these two verses are directed toward wives and not women in general. These wives are instructed to remain silent, not speaking, in submission to their own husbands. Now Paul adds that if they have questions about what is being taught, they should ask their husbands in the privacy of their own homes. Paul adds that it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

Despite modern offense, scholars reject the suggestions these verses were added by someone other than Paul. Also unlikely is that Paul quotes someone in Corinth so they can be refuted. Looking to the prior comments about head covering, in chapter 11, this seems to be more about how a marriage relationship is expressed in public, than about women's roles in the church, per se.

For one thing, Paul clearly allowed for women to participate in services by prayer or prophesying as long as their heads were properly covered (1 Corinthians 11:2–16). For another, the early Christian church countered prevailing Greek and Roman culture, by welcoming women to personal faith in Christ. Radically, Christian women were called to participation in the community with or without their husbands. This seems to have caused backlash against Christianity, as well as causing some women to abuse their freedom in Christ by openly disrespecting their husbands.

Perhaps, then, Paul is commanding wives to be clear about their submission to their husbands, rather than speaking openly in the general conversation of the church service. Doing so may have brought shame on their husbands for an apparent lack of knowledge on his part or lack or authority in his home.

In any case, Paul's commands in these verses are generally not practiced closely in most modern churches, even very conservative ones. The general sense of a woman publicly speaking, even in church, has a cultural meaning very different from that of the era when these words were written. Few believers interpret these words as a blanket prohibition on any speech by a married woman in church.