Following John Calvin’s exposition of the “three offices” of Christ (Institutes, II.15), it has become customary for many modern theologians to focus on Jesus’ fulfillment of the Old Testament offices of “Prophet, Priest, and King” (WCF 8.1), and these only. But what of the OT office of “the Head”? Is “headship” even to be understood as an OT office?
New Testament scholarship has tended to understand Paul’s use of the term “head” (kephale) primarily within the first-century cultural context in which Paul was writing, with special reference to Greco-Roman “household codes.” In this understanding, Paul takes up a Greco-Roman concept (the “head” of household, the patriarch, the paterfamilias) and Christianizes it for early Christians. He takes this culturally understood category and puts it in service of explaining the gospel of Christ: Jesus is the true exemplar of what a (Greco-Roman) ‘head of household’ ought to be, Paul is purportedly saying (e.g. Eph 5:22–33).
But is this what Paul is saying?
I contend that all of Paul’s thinking and writing is to be understood primarily within the context not of Greco-Roman culture generally, but of the thought-world provided by the Scriptures of Israel, as expressed within the liturgical life of first-century Judaism. Put bluntly, when Paul says that Jesus is the head of the church (Eph 5:23; Col 1:18), he is not speaking primarily with reference to Greco-Roman household codes but with reference to a Hebraic-Scriptural office. And, as I have argued in a previous article, within the Scriptures of Israel, the head is the representative member of the body, not the ruler over it.
In what follows, I will argue further that the OT “head” is an office that denotes “soteriological representation.” In other words, the head is the one in whom the salvation or damnation of the whole body is mediated. As such, Paul sees in the OT office of the “head” a figure of Christ.
Old Testament Heads
Throughout the OT, the “head” consistently functions as a figure for corporate blessing and cursing. When the head is blessed, the whole body is blessed; when the head is cursed, so is the whole body. This is literally true, and metaphorically true. When the (literal) head is cursed or blessed, the whole person is cursed or blessed. When the (metaphorical) head (of household) is cursed or blessed, so the whole body (i.e., all persons under his “headship”).
First, the literal. In the opening chapters of Genesis, God declares the defeat of the serpent’s “head” through the woman’s promised seed. “He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (3:15). Here, the crushing of the head is the crushing of the whole person—in this case, the destruction of the entire demonic realm represented by and existing under Satan. In other words, the crushing of the serpent’s head signals not the demise of the serpent only, but of all who “belong” to this serpentine body (cf. John 8:44).
Various OT writers pick up on this promise, that God will destroy His enemies and save His people by the bruising (or “crushing”) of the enemy’s head. In the book of Judges, Israel triumphs over their enemy when “[Jael] drove the peg into [Sisera’s] temple . . . she crushed his head” (Jgs 4:21; 5:26). A later victory is won when “a certain woman threw an upper millstone on Abimelech’s head and crushed his skull” (Jgs 9:53; cf. 9:57). Salvation will later be brought to all of Israel when David strikes and cuts off Goliath’s head (1 Sam 15:45–51). This head-crushing motif is likewise present in the fall of the Philistine god, Dagon, and the defeat of the rebel, Sheba (2 Sam 20:22), each of whose heads are “cut off” (1 Sam 5:4; 2 Sam 20:22).
All of this saving “head-crushing” is further to be understood within the more cosmic context of God doing battle against His adversaries: “You broke the heads of the sea monsters,” says the psalmist; “you crushed the heads of Leviathan” (Ps 74:13-14; see also 68:21; Hab 3:13–14). In every case, the defeat of the head is the defeat of the whole body of which it is representative.
Conversely, the head also comes into view as the locus of blessing and salvation. “May [blessings] be on the head of Joseph” (Gen 49:26). Such a blessing, of course, is for Joseph’s whole person and, by extension, to all those “in” him (i.e., his lineage). In the Psalms, David refers to God as “the lifter of my head” (e.g., Ps 3:3; also 27:6; 110:7), and associates God’s salvation with his head’s protection (Ps 140:7; see also Isa 59:17; cf. Eph 6:17).
In every case, the head is the locus of salvation for the whole person. When the head is saved or blessed, so the whole body; when the head is crushed or cursed, so the whole body.
And this is not only true on the literal-anatomical level, but also on the metaphorical plane.
Throughout the long genealogical line of Israel’s “household heads,” we find the blessing of the “head” (e.g., Adam, Noah, Abraham, Israel, Joseph, etc.) is given not for him only, but for his entire household. Indeed, within Israel, the father of each household serves as covenant representative, making sacrifices of atonement (Num 7:1–3; cf. Job 1:4-7) and covenant promises (Josh 24:1-28) on behalf of the household. It is the household head’s covenant status—marked out as a circumcised descendant of Abraham—that functions as the chief indicator and necessary sign of the entire family’s covenant status (see Deut 7:3–4). Accordingly, when a foreign woman is married to a “head” in Israel, she too is of Israel (e.g., Ruth; Rahab).
In these ways, the head and the body are consistently presented as a single unit—bound together such that all that belongs to the members belongs also to the head, and all that belongs to the head belongs to the members. Moreover, we can observe that what belongs to the head often outweighs or overcomes what belongs to the members. As head, the father and husband in Israel can overcome the folly of his members, saving them from the consequences of foolish oaths (Num 30:3–16). As head, David’s descendants cannot altogether avoid his blessing, nor Joab’s descendants his curse (1 Ki 2:33; 2 Ki 8:19).
The head is thus presented in various instances in the Old Testament as a figure of corporate salvation, as the soteriological representative of the body.
Perhaps this all sounds like someone you’ve heard of before.
Christ the True and Better Head
As we have seen, the Scriptures of Israel consistently present the “head” as the one in whom blessing and salvation are mediated. What is more, Hosea prophesies the day when Israel’s salvation will come through such a “head”:
“And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint for themselves one head. And they shall go up from the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel” (Hos 1:11).
Paul could not have missed this. Surely Jesus was this “head” of whom the law and prophets had attested, the “substance” of this “shadow” (Col 2:17). Sure enough, this is exactly how Paul presents Christ.
Christ is the “head of every man” (1 Cor 11:3). “He is the head of all rule and authority” (Col 2:10). He is the one whom God gave “as head over all things to the church” (Eph 1:22). As “head of the church” he is “Savior of the body” (Eph 5:23; Col 1:18), and as such he lays his life down for the church (Eph 5:25).
As head, he has become the object of our judgment, the final sin offering, taking our disgrace to Golgotha, the place of the skull. There, the serpent’s head is crushed by the cross—like a tent peg driven into the temple of the enemy—even as the Messiah’s feet are cut and bruised. “He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” Truly, his head was crowned with thorns that we might be given “a beautiful crown” (Prov 4:9; Rev 2:10; 14:14).
The Old Testament head is the soteriological representative of a body. The victory and salvation of the head is the victory and salvation of the whole body. And, to borrow a phrase from the Apostle Paul, “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.”
The question now moves to what this all means for the church today, especially in light of Paul’s claim that “the man is the head of the woman” (1 Cor 11:3), the husband the “head” of his wife (Eph 5:23). How do we understand and apply the meaning of “headship” today? This will be the subject of the next (and final) article in this series.
