Overview of the Practice

Face-veiling is practiced by a portion of women within the movement, though it is neither universal nor formally required. No central governing body mandates it. Where it is kept, adherents typically wear a niqab-style veil covering the lower face with the eyes uncovered, combined with a full headscarf — removed at home, among close family, and in same-sex company. Hair covering without a face veil is more common across the movement as a whole.

Primary Scriptural Basis — Rivkah (Rebekah)

This verse from the account of Rivkah's first meeting with Yitzchak (Isaac) is the most frequently cited basis for face-veiling within the movement. Several features of the text are considered significant by adherents:

• The act is self-initiated — no male figure commands Rivkah to veil; she does so voluntarily upon recognizing the sacred nature of the moment
• It occurs at the threshold of marriage — a covenantal, sacred transition — suggesting veiling as the appropriate posture for entering something of high significance
• The Hebrew word used, tza'if, refers specifically to a face or body veil, distinct from ordinary head-covering

Secondary Scriptural Basis — Susanna

The account of Susanna (found in Daniel 13 in the Septuagint and the Catholic/Orthodox canon, sometimes called the "Additions to Daniel") is cited by adherents as a second major reference. The passage is read as demonstrating that the veil, worn voluntarily, represents dignity and self-possession — because its removal is framed explicitly as an act of violation against her, not as a neutral uncovering.

Supporting Texts

This verse from the sotah ritual (the procedure for a woman suspected of unfaithfulness) implies that bound or covered hair was the ordinary dignified state, since its unbinding was a deliberate act of exposure associated with accusation and shame.

This passage is cited with qualification — it falls outside the Hebrew canon and addresses a Greco-Roman audience — but is treated as historical evidence that head-covering during prayer was assumed as the norm across multiple first-century cultures, independently of any single religious mandate.

The Veil Through the Ages

Face and hair covering has a long history, and the women named in scripture lived in worlds where it carried real social meaning. One honest limit should be stated first: ancient cloth rarely survives, and the texts are brief. For each of the women below we can describe the customs of her world — but not, with certainty, what she personally wore.

In Rivkah's World — the Patriarchal Age

The word used when Rivkah covers herself (Genesis 24:65) is the Hebrew tza'if, from a root meaning "to wrap over." It describes a large enveloping cloth — a shawl or mantle drawn over the head and body — rather than a small purpose-made face-veil. The same word appears only twice more in the whole Hebrew Bible, both of Tamar (Genesis 38:14, 19), where the garment is ample enough to conceal her identity completely. The veil, then, was something that hid identity and signalled a woman's role.

Read closely, the text says Rivkah "covered herself" — it does not specify the face. Whether she veiled her face is an old and reasonable inference, not a statement of the verse. Much of what is written about the exact garment rests on later reconstruction rather than surviving evidence.

The Oldest Written Veil Laws — Assyria

The earliest known laws about veiling come from the Middle Assyrian Laws (around 1075 BCE), and they reveal the veil's original meaning with striking clarity. They dictated exactly who could and could not veil:

• Required to veil: respectable free women — the wives, widows, and daughters of free men.
• Forbidden to veil: slave women and prostitutes, who had to go bareheaded; harsh punishments awaited any who broke the rule.

Here the veil is a legally enforced badge of honour, status, and marriage — marking a woman as free and as belonging to a household. Notably, this sets the veil as a social marker of the ancient Near East roughly two thousand years before Islam, and originally tied to no single religion.

In Susanna's World — the Second Temple Period

By Susanna's time — the story is set among the Jewish exiles in Babylon and was written down around the second century BCE — covering the hair was a well-established mark of dignity for a married Jewish woman, and to go out bareheaded was shameful. In the account, the elders order the veiled Susanna to be unveiled so they can gaze at her; the text frames this as violation and public humiliation, echoing the shaming exposure of the sotah ritual (Numbers 5:18). Her veil, worn willingly, stands for dignity — its forced removal is the offence.

Susanna is a teaching tale rather than a court record, and the surviving Greek versions differ on precisely what was uncovered. It is valued here as early evidence that veiling a respectable married woman was simply assumed as normal.

In Maria's World — First-Century Judea

In the era of Miriam (Mary), covering the hair was the expected norm of modesty for married Jewish women in public. In practice this was usually a scarf, kerchief, or the woman's own mantle drawn up over the hair — generally covering the hair rather than the face. The surrounding Greco-Roman world had a matching custom: the respectable Roman matron's palla (a large rectangular mantle) could be pulled over the head, and both men and women covered the head during prayer and sacrifice (capite velato).

A woman like Miriam most likely wore an ankle-length tunic of linen or wool, belted at the waist, with a large mantle that could be drawn over the head. (The familiar red-and-blue robes of later paintings are an artistic convention, not history; real garments of the period were often brightly dyed.)

No record survives of what Mary herself wore; this is a reconstruction from the customs, texts, and textile finds of her time. Scholars agree that in the Jewish line specifically, hair-covering is far better attested than face-covering.

Veiling in Comparative Religious Context

Face and hair covering for women appears, at different points, across all three Abrahamic traditions:

• Jewish tradition: married women covering hair has been standard across many Orthodox and traditional Jewish communities for centuries, documented in the Talmud (Ketubbot 72a, citing the custom as established practice). The method varies — wig (sheitel), scarf (tichel), or hat — but facial covering is not generally practiced in contemporary Jewish observance.
• Christian tradition: head-covering during prayer was widespread in early and Eastern Christianity. The practice declined in Western Protestantism from the seventeenth century onward and in Catholic practice after the Second Vatican Council (1960s), but remains common in some Orthodox and conservative communities.
• Islamic tradition: the hijab (headscarf) is practiced widely; the niqab (face veil) is practiced by smaller communities, based on a minority scholarly opinion that face-covering is required beyond basic modesty.

The form of veiling practiced by some women in this movement — face and hair covered, with eyes visible — most closely resembles the niqab in outward appearance, though the theological grounding is entirely distinct, deriving from the Hebrew Bible passages above rather than from Islamic scholarship.

A Practice Being Rediscovered

Veiling is not a relic. Among Christian women today there is a quiet but real revival of covering — kept faithfully in Conservative Anabaptist, Orthodox, and some Pentecostal communities, and taken up afresh by many others through the wider head-covering movement. Most of this renewal is hair-covering; a smaller and growing number of women are choosing fuller covering, and some cover the face as well. A woman who veils today — whether with a headscarf, or a headscarf and a face-veil — stands within a living and growing sisterhood, not alone and not behind the times.

An Invitation to Veil

House of Miriam warmly encourages the women of this community to take up the veil. We see it not as a burden or a mark of being hidden away, but as a crown of dignity — a way of reserving what is precious for its proper time and place, and of carrying the quiet reverence of Rivkah's gesture into daily life.

There is room here for every step. For one woman that may mean covering the hair with a scarf; for another, the hair and the face together. Both are honoured; neither is forced. If you have wondered whether to begin, take this as a gentle word of welcome: you are invited, you are not alone, and this community is growing.

Veiling at House of Miriam is embraced and encouraged as a devotional practice, freely chosen — never a condition of belonging.