5.
Women’s Clothing
As
men’s garments suit their work and station, so women’s garments
complement the protected place of women, who are given to be corner-stones
of the home and guides of their children in the way of life (Prov. 31:1; II
Tim. 1:5). Co-heirs of the grace of life and joint-heirs with Christ (I
Peter 3:7; Rom.
8:17), women in
particular are enjoined to be discreet and chaste (Titus 2:5). Young men are
to be sober minded (v. 6) and to guard against the lusts of youth (II Tim. 2:22), but
divine revelation emphasises the need for women to be modestly covered and
careful to see that their attire is in every way agreeable to the will of
God:
I
will therefore that men pray every where, lifting up holy hands, without
wrath and doubting. In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in
modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety (I Tim. 2:8, 9).
The
godly women of old were adorned with full-length
dresses which covered them approximately down to the ankles or the feet (Isa.
47:2; Jer.
13:22, 26),
and which were sometimes richly embroidered, particularly among
royalty (II Sam.
13:18; Psalm 45:13, 14;
Ezek. 16:10). Such garments
served as reminders of the perfect righteousness of Christ, as did the long
robes once worn by men at weddings and other occasions (Matt. 22:11).
We have already seen that one great difference between noblemen’s long
robes and the ordinary attire of women is that the woman’s dress was the
guardian of her modesty; thus in public she invariably wore a long robe and
that at full length on every occasion. Her “outer garment”, says Easton’s
Bible Dictionary, “terminated in an ample
fringe or border, which concealed the feet (Isaiah 47:2; Jeremiah
13:22)”.[1]
Smith’s
Bible Dictionary states that although
the costumes of men and women were very similar, there was sufficient
difference to mark the sex, and
it
was strictly forbidden to a woman to wear the appendages, such as the staff,
signet-ring, and other ornaments, of a man; as well as to a man to wear the
outer robe of a woman. Deut. 22:5 . . . The dress of the women differed from
that of the men in regard to the outer garment . . . Among their distinctive
robes we find a kind of shawl, Ruth 3:15; Isa. 3:22, light summer dresses of
handsome appearance and ample dimensions, and gay holiday dresses. Isa.
3:24.[2]
As long hair is comely, indeed essential for women (I Cor. 11:15), so
the long skirt is modest, attractive and ladylike, and these facts are
detected even by the natural senses; whereas it is patent that trousers,
while acceptable for men, are neither fitted nor suited for ladies. Trousers
are not mentioned in the Bible as part of the woman’s wardrobe; they were
never worn by women as an outer garment and are not to be considered an
adequate substitute for the long skirt.[3]
In Scripture the uncovering of the woman’s skirt is a euphemism for
adultery: “A man shall not take his father’s wife, nor discover his
father’s skirt” (Deut. 22:30).
Matthew Poole remarks as follows:
His
father’s skirt,
i.e. the skirt of the mother’s garment, i.e. the nakedness, which is here
called his father’s skirt,
because his father and mother were one flesh, or because his father alone
had the right to uncover it. The phrase is taken from the ancient custom or
ceremony of the bridegroom’s spreading the skirt of his garment over the
bride, to signify his right to her, and authority over her, and his
obligation to the marriage duty. See Ruth 3.9; Ezek. 16.8.[4]
Isaiah prophesied of the spiritual captivity and humiliation of the
Roman abomination – which is represented as the “virgin daughter of
Babylon” (cf. Rev. 14:8, 17:5, 9) – and made reference not only to the
shame of uncovering the thigh, but of making bare the leg (that is, between
the knee and ankle), the Hebrew words speaking of the removal of the skirts
which cover this area:
Come
down, and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon, sit on the ground: there
is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans: for thou shalt no more be
called tender and delicate. Take the millstones, and grind meal: uncover thy
locks, make bare the leg, uncover the thigh, pass over the rivers. Thy
nakedness shall be uncovered, yea, thy shame shall be seen: I will take
vengeance, and I will not meet thee as a man. As for our
redeemer, the LORD of hosts is his name, the Holy One of Israel
(Isa. 47:1-4).
The reason the woman’s leg is mentioned with shame is that it
should have been covered with the modest apparel appropriate for women,
unlike the “legs of a man” (Psalm 147:10), which represent the strength
of one who girds up his loins for battle. Women’s skirts are meant to be
long and relatively spacious – not so tightened as to hinder a modest gait
(Isa.
3:16) – and are
essential for feminine modesty and dignity:
For
the greatness of thine iniquity are thy skirts discovered, and thy heels made bare . . . Therefore will I discover thy skirts
upon thy face, that thy shame may appear (Jer. 13:22, 26).
To
the same end is the Lord’s denunciation of the city of
Nineveh, which is
represented as a harlot (Nahum 3:5, cf. Deut. 22:30; Isa. 47:2; Ezek.
16:37).
Thus the whole outfit of godly women should be long, relatively loose
and flowing, and evidently composed of opaque material, not indecently thin
or adhesive. It should be completely different from the attire of the woman
in Proverbs 7:10, who, as John Gill thinks, was wearing
“showy gaudy garments, such as the Athenian whores wore, or short ones, as
the Romans; the word signifies one fitted to her body, neat and well shaped,
to recommend her: so the woman, the whore of Rome, is said to be arrayed in
purple and scarlet colour”.[5]
But
the beauty seen in the godly women of Scripture was not so much of bodily form
as of the face, indicating that their clothing was not formfitting but
graceful: “Now the name of the man was
Nabal; and the name of his wife Abigail: and she
was a woman of good understanding, and of a beautiful countenance” (I
Sam. 25:3, cf. Gen. 24:16, 29:17; II Sam. 14:27). Note that the same Hebrew
words as used for Abigail’s “beautiful countenance” are used in Genesis
29:17 for Rachel, who “was beautiful and well favoured” – yet some modern
translations indicate that the phrase in Genesis makes a reference to bodily
form or figure. Such an interpretation introduces a new slant on the text which
tends to the impression of a modern fashion, alien to the commodious dress in
use among Abraham’s kinswomen (cf. Gen. 31:34, 35).
In
the New Testament the apostle Paul enjoins women to “adorn themselves in
modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety” (I Tim. 2:9). The word
translated here as “apparel” is katastolh
(katastole),
which combines stolh (stole),[6]
the common New Testament word for a dignified long robe (Mark 12:38, 16:5; Luke
15:22,
20:46; Rev. 6:11, 7:9),
with the prefix
kata
(kata),
which means “down” or in some instances “covered down” (cf. I Cor.
11:4). Elsewhere in Scripture, where garments in general are intended and
not dignified long robes in particular, the word is usually
imation
(himation),
and stole
or katastole are not included. Thus, using the word katastole,
Paul commands Christian women to wear garments in the form of long robes –
modest apparel, or modest long
robes – in keeping with the
custom of the godly women in Old Testament times. So John Gill:
that
women adorn themselves in modest apparel:
the word rendered ‘apparel’ signifies a long robe, which reaches down to
the feet; and the word translated ‘modest’ signifies that which is
clean, neat, and decent, yea, beautiful and ornamental . . . The apostle
adds, with shamefacedness and
sobriety: these are the two general rules by which dress is to be
regulated; it is right and proper, when it is consistent with chastity, when
it is not immodest and impudent, and more like the attire of an harlot than
of
a woman professing godliness; and when it is moderate as well as modest,
and suitable to a person's age and station, and is not beyond the
circumstances of life in which they are. There is no religion or irreligion
in dress, provided pride and luxury are guarded against, and modesty and
moderation preserved.[7]
So the argument that women in modern, Western-style trousers may be
as biblically modest and distinctively feminine as the ladies of the era
when both sexes wore Eastern robes is groundless, the Eastern woman’s
garment having always been a full-length, feminine dress,[8]
similar to the
traditional attire of Christian women in the West.[9]
An interesting quotation from Tertullian (AD c.
155–c. 220), the Church Father from
Carthage
in
modern
Tunisia,
demonstrates that a major factor in the distinctiveness of women’s robes
from those of men was their elegance and their modest, concealing nature –
they “were
the evidences and guardians of dignity”:
Just
so, if a man were to wear a dainty robe trailing on the ground with Menander-like
effeminacy, he would hear applied to himself that which the comedian says:
‘What sort of a cloak is that maniac wasting?’ . . . Turn, again, to
women. You have to behold what Caecina Severus pressed upon the grave
attention of the senate – matrons stoleless in public. In fact, the
penalty inflicted by the decrees of the augur Lentulus upon any matron who
had thus cashiered herself was the same as for fornication; inasmuch as
certain matrons had sedulously promoted the disuse of garments which were
the evidences and guardians of dignity . . . But while one extinguishes her
proper adornments, another blazes forth such as are not hers.[10]
The femininity of the woman’s dress is also manifested in
its simple delicacy and ornamental features. Charles
Bridges (1794-1869) writes:
The
primary respect inculcated to the inward ‘adorning’ [I Pet. 3:4; I Tim. 2:10] in no way renders
the exterior grace a nullity. Even in isolated seclusion some regard would
be due; much more, as suited to the gradation which Providence has assigned;
and as commanding an husband’s respect, who justly claims, that his
wife’s exterior, so far as she is concerned, should continue to be not less pleasing,
than when at first his heart was drawn to her.[11]
Thus in
kings’ houses, where “soft clothing” is worn (Matt. 11:8), the
woman’s dress is especially ornamented, according to her sex and station:
I
clothed thee also with broidered work, and shod thee with badgers’ skin,
and I girded thee about with fine linen, and I covered thee with silk. I
decked thee also with ornaments, and I put bracelets upon thy hands, and a
chain on thy neck, And I put a jewel on thy forehead, and earrings in thine
ears, and a beautiful crown upon thine head (Ezek. 16:10-12, cf. Gen. 24:22;
II Sam. 1:24, 13:18; Isa. 49:18; Jer. 2:32).
Nonetheless, unnatural extravagance is condemned throughout the Word
of God: “Though thou clothest thyself with crimson, though thou deckest
thee with ornaments of gold, though thou rentest thy face with painting, in
vain shalt thou make thyself fair” (Jer. 4:30, cf. II Kings 9:30; Isa.
3:18-23; Ezek. 23:40; I Tim. 2:9; I Peter 3:3). Clement of Alexandria, the
Church Father born in
Egypt
around AD 150,
said in his comments on clothing:
Let
the women wear a plain and becoming dress, but softer than what is suitable
for a man, yet not quite immodest or entirely gone in luxury. And let the
garments be suited to age, person, figure, nature, pursuits. For the divine
apostle most beautifully counsels us ‘to put on Jesus Christ, and make no
provision for the lusts of the flesh.’[12]
Such articles of clothing as the headscarf or veil are not ordinarily
appropriate for men – whose veiling the head for pagan worship[13]
is probably alluded to in Ezekiel 13:18, 21 – but well suited to ladies.
The English-born Puritan John Cotton (1585-1652), who immigrated to the
colony of
New England, wrote, “The
vail is for a sign, 1. Of subjection, I Cor. 11.10. 2. Of protection, Gen.
20.16. 3. Of ornament, Isa. 3.23. The same word.”[14]
Similarly, James Durham explains the biblical usage of women’s veils in
his work on the Song of Solomon, a commentary highly commended by John Owen:
The
last step is, ‘they took away my vail from me;’ the word that is
rendered ‘vail,’ comes from a root that signifieth to subdue, it is that
same word which we have, Psalm 144:2, ‘who subdues the people,’ &c.
It hath a threefold use, 1. For decoration, as Isa.
3:23. 2. For a sign of modesty, pleaded for by the apostle, I
Cor. 11:6. 3. And mainly, for a sign of women's subjection to their own
husbands; for which cause Rebekah puts on her vail, when she meets Isaac,
Gen. 24:65. And therefore it is called power, as being the sign of the
wife's being under the power of her husband, I Cor. 11:10. Here her vail is
the tenderness of her profession, whereby, in a decent, modest and humble
way, she professed herself to be a believer, seeking after Christ Jesus, as
one bearing the badge of subjection to him as her Husband.[15]
And
therefore we say, that in men and women both there is condemned by the Lord,
1. Costliness and excessive bravery [i.e.,
showiness] of apparel, I Tim. 2:9. which saith not that we are to foster
sordidness or baseness, or that men in all places or stations, and of all
ranks, should, as to their apparel, be equal, but that none should exceed .
. . 4. Wantonness and lightness in them [i.e.,
clothes and dressings], which is especially in nakedness, as to such and
such parts of the body, which in modesty are to be hid; for women having
clothes for a cover, ought to make use of them for that end; and it is more
than probable, that that walking with
stretched-out necks, there reproved, relateth to women, their making
more of their necks, and their breasts bare, than should be, or is decent,
they affected to discover or raise their gorgets,[17]
when God commendeth modesty, and nature is best pleased in its own
unaffected freedom, yet they stretched them out: It is both a wonderful and
sad thing, that women should need to be reproved for such things, which are
in themselves, 1. So gross, that let the most innocent be inquired, whence
these more than ordinary discoveries do proceed: and they must at least
grant, that the first practisers of such a fashion, could have no other
design in it, than the more hereby to please and allure men’s carnal eyes
and regards: And, 2. So impudent; for if to be all naked be shameful and
exceeding ready to provoke lust, must not nakedness in
part, more or less, be, and do the same? So that this will be found a
glorying in their shame; for nakedness hitherto was always looked upon as a
reproach: We read of old of such as were grave, that they covered themselves
with a vail: And, I Cor. 11. married women’s going abroad uncovered is
looked on as unnatural: What would such say if they lived in our times? We
are persuaded the gravest among women are most averse from this evil, and
the lightest are most prone and given to it: And seeing all women should be
grave, it must import a disclaiming of that qualification where this
lightness is delighted in: If therefore there be any shame, if there be any
conscience, we will expect to prevail with some who are touched with the
sense of gravity, that they may be good examples to the rest, at once
endeavour effectually to bring gravity and modest shamefacedness in fashion
again.[18]
Mr Durham had no need in his generation to emphasise the woman’s
duty to wear long garments, because the world was not then so far out of
order. This fact is demonstrated in the treatise
of William Ames
(1576-1633) against human ceremonies in God’s worship. In this
work, long garments are equated with “women’s proper apparel” – the
claim that the woman’s veil of I Corinthians 11 was an introduction in
worship is here met with the argument that the veil was “a
civil order of decency, used as well out of God’s worship as in it . . .
which will bear well this conclusion: that it was no more religious, than
women’s proper apparel, long garments, &c.”[19]
Such an argument evinces
the orthodox belief that it was not merely contemporary fashion that
compelled women to wear long garments, but “a
civil order of decency”. As is clear from the context, Dr Ames was not
attempting to convince his opponent of the virtues of long garments for
women (which are complemented by long hair and other coverings) – he was
simply using the example, as being obvious even from nature itself and
approved of by all churches, to persuade his opponents in a more
controversial dispute, one that concerned human ceremonies in the worship of
God. Dr Ames continues: “modesty, shamefacedness, gravity, and care of not
offending, are professed by all apparel of modest honest fashion. And yet I
never heard of modest apparel called a mystical religious ceremony.” So it
is the age-old conviction among Christians that, aside from what men may
wear, the long gown has always been, and still is, the garment which for
women is indispensable. In fact, it seems that no Protestant reformed church
prior to the late 20th century ever considered the long dress
not to be essential to feminine modesty, and the teaching that such
covering is morally required of women was not disputed among Christians in
past ages.
True modesty is pleasing to God and springs from a heart consent to His
holiness, obtained by union with Christ, “According as his divine power
hath given unto us all things that pertain
unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called
us to glory and virtue” (II Peter 1:3). And good works, performed in
obedience to God’s commandments, “are the fruits and evidences of a true
and lively faith”,[20]
as the apostle James teaches (James 2:18, 22). “But he that
lacketh these things,” says Peter,
is
blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from
his old sins. Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your
calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall:
For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the
everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (II Peter 1:9-11).
Dr William Smith, Smith’s
Bible Dictionary (1884).
However, trouser-like undergarments such as pantalets have long been in
use among modest women in the East and West.
Definition in James Strong’s ‘Greek Dictionary of the New Testament’:
“stolh,
stol-ay’;
from (stellw);
equipment, i.e.
(special) a ‘stole’
or long-fitting gown (as a mark of dignity): –
long clothing (garment), (long) robe” (Strong’s
Exhaustive Concordance,
p67). Compare with definition of the
English word ‘stole’ (taken from the Greek stolh
via the
Latin ‘stola’) in the Concise
Oxford
Dictionary:
“Stole1 n. 1. (Rom.
Ant.) Woman’s long loose outer dress”
(Oxford University Press, 1978, p1133).
[20]
‘Of Good Works’, Westminster Confession of Faith, chap. 16:2, p68.
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