1 Corinthians 14:34,35 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Let your women, &c. The last clause of the preceding verse is by some critics, and among the rest Bishop Pearce, joined with this, so as to make this sense; as in all the churches of the saints, let your women keep silence in the churches, namely, of Achaia. According to this reading, by the churches of the saints, are meant the churches of Judea, in which the public worship and discipline was most perfect, because they had been planted and regulated by the apostles. The sense of this clause, let your women keep silence, &c, evidently is, that they were to be silent unless they had an extraordinary revelation to communicate, made to them by the Holy Spirit; to which revelations, chiefly predicting future events, what is said of their prophesying with their heads uncovered, (1 Corinthians 11:5,) evidently refers; and therefore implies no contradiction to what is here enjoined. For In other cases, when no particular revelation is made to them; it is not permitted unto them to speak By way of teaching in public assemblies; but to be under obedience Greek, υποτασσεσθαι, to be under subjection to the superior authority of the man, whose proper office it is to lead and to instruct the congregation. As also saith the law In recording that early sentence on Eve and her daughters for the first transgression, Genesis 3:16, To him shall be thy desire subjected, and he shall rule over thee. And if they desire to learn any thing Still they are not to speak in public, but to ask their husbands at home That is the place, and these the persons to inquire of. See note on 1 Timothy 2:11-14. For it is a shame Αισχρον, indecent; for a woman to speak in the church In an assembly of people, being inconsistent with that modesty, which is the woman's greatest ornament.