'Let the women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted to them to speak. But let them be in subjection, as also says the law. And if they would learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in the church.'
That women were allowed to prophesy we know from chapter 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. Whether they could do so in the church we are not told, but it would seem likely that that was one of the main reasons why she had to wear a covering when she did so, so that she was not seen to be challenging the headship of man. Thus this does not seemingly refer to that.
We have, however, had one or two earlier cases of people who were to keep silence. The man who had 'a tongue' when there was no interpreter present was told to keep silence (1 Corinthians 14:28). The prophet is to keep silence if a special revelation from God comes (1 Corinthians 14:30). Thus the command to keep silence is not for women alone. All should keep silence who have nothing at that time to contribute to the edification of those present. Why then should women particularly keep silence as a whole? Paul supplies the answer. It is because it is they who had the tendency to chatter. It is because it was they who constantly asked their husbands questions, and thus tended to be noisy, and even embarrassed the prophets who spoke. It was the women who tended most to chatter and to gossip (1 Timothy 5:13). It is because, unlike the prophetess who keeps her head covered, they are often oblivious to what they are doing and get so noisy that they seem to forget the headship of man. They forget the need for submission and tend to disturb the meetings. It is even possible that they had much to do with the misuse of tongues. Nothing would have caused more confusion than excited women endlessly expressing themselves in tongues, interrupting what was going on.
Thus, like the man with a tongue when no interpreter is present, they are to maintain a dignified silence. It is not permitted to them to speak. They are under authority. They must not chatter. They should speak to themselves and to God (1 Corinthians 14:28). They must not cause any confusion in the church service, especially by continually asking questions.
Of course, there is an unstated assumption that if one had a genuine gift of grace (charismata), they may utilise it in accordance with what Paul has been saying, for that has been stated in chapter 11. There was no forbidding of that. Although even then it was only when wearing something that indicated their submission to the headship of man and of Christ. Then it was permissible. They could also no doubt sing and take part in worship. What they must not do is chatter and ask questions of their husbands.
Again reference is made to the Law concerning the need for a woman's submission to man as indicated by Genesis 1-2, as he has previously indicated in his arguments in 1 Corinthians 11:3-16. They must recognise continually God's order of things.
So if women wish to understand anything that has taken place in the church gathering, or that has been said in a prophecy, they should not start up a conversation about it, they should remain silent and ask their husbands at home, indicating by this their recognition that they are helpmeets not heads.
(The difficulty that these verses caused in the Western church comes out in that Western manuscripts, and they alone, placed 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 after 1 Corinthians 14:40. Someone was unhappy with them where they were. Yet all the earlier manuscripts (which are non-Western) without exception have them in the correct place, and there is no early evidence at all for them not being a part of the text. Apart from these Western witnesses, the evidence for their inclusion is overwhelming in the terms of textual criticism.
That the change took place very early comes out in the unanimity of Western witnesses. It is possible that the change took place so as to connect 1 Corinthians 14:36 directly with what has gone before rather than it being seen as a comment on 1 Corinthians 14:35-36, some in the Western church seeing 1 Corinthians 14:35-36 as interrupting the flow and relatively unimportant. Or it may have been due to the influence of highborn women in Rome who used their influence when the first copy of the letter was received and read out, to minimise the influence of the verses by this change, the church refusing to excise them altogether.
Most of those who would remove them today probably do so for the same reason as the Western church moved them to follow 1 Corinthians 14:40, because they do not fit in with our view of how Paul should have written his letter and somehow they do not fit in with our ideas. They are inconvenient. So let us put them out of the way. Then they find arguments which will justify the decision, as we always can. (This is not of course done consciously. We are all at times guilty of this process, and should be aware of it). But their arguments are certainly not conclusive, and are not sufficient to overthrow the combined witness of the early manuscripts.
For we can quite understand why some highborn aristocratic Roman women, offended at the implication of these verses and the limit they might place on them, might have been able to use their great influence (not paralleled elsewhere) to prevail on the Roman church to make them a postscript to the section rather than part of the instructions about church worship, thus minimising their influence. Yet it would indicate that even these women could not carry enough weight to have them moved completely. They were Scripture. In other parts of the world there were not such pressures. (This may be so or it may not. But in the end we will never know).