John 11:9. Are there not twelve hours in the day?
The Jewish day was reckoned from evening to evening. See note on 1 Corinthians 15:4 (#868). The word “day” was, however, used in another sense also, as with us, to denote that portion of the twenty-four hours during which the sun shone. While the night was divided into watches (see note on Mark 13:35, #743) the day was divided into hours; each of these hours being one twelfth of the time between sunrise and sunset Thus the hours varied in length according to the time of year, the summer hours being longer than those of winter. In the latitude of Palestine the longest day has, according to our reckoning, fourteen hours and twelve minutes, and the shortest nine hours and forty-eight minutes. This makes a difference of four hours and twenty-four minutes between the longest day and shortest. If we divide the day into twelve hours, there will be found a difference of twenty-two minutes between the longest hour and the shortest, the length of the hour varying from forty-nine minutes to seventy-one.
The first hour began at sunrise, the sixth ended at noon, and the twelfth ended at sunset. The third hour divided the period between sunrise and noon, and the ninth between noon and sunset. The first at its close corresponded nearly to seven o’clock A. M. of our time, and the twelfth hour to six o’clock P. M.
The “third hour” is mentioned in Matthew 20:3; Mark 15:25; Acts 2:15. It may, be roughly reckoned at nine o’clock A. M. of our time. The “sixth hour” is named in Matthew 20:5; 22:45; Mark 15:33; Luke 23: 44; John 4:6; 19:14; Acts 10:9. It corresponded exactly to twelve o’clock noon of our time. The “seventh hour” is mentioned in John 4:52. It was about one o’clock P. M. The “ninth hour” is spoken of in Matthew 20:5; 27:45-46; Mark 15:33, 34; Luke 23:44; Acts 3:1; 10:3. It was about three o’clock P. M. The tenth hour” is named in John 1:39. It was about four o’clock P. M. Some commentators, however, contend that John, writing this Gospel in the later years of his life, referred to Roman time and not to Jewish, thus making the hour ten o’clock A. M. This could hardly be, unless all his other estimates of time were reckoned in the same way, which, from a consideration of various texts, is highly improbable; besides, as Lucke (cited by Alford) remarks, even among the Romans the division of the day into twelve equal hours was, though not the civil, the popular way of computing time. The “eleventh hour” is mentioned in Matthew 20:6,9, and corresponds nearly to five o’clock P. M.
There also seems to have been a popular mode of reckoning the hours of the night in a similar way, as well as by watches. “Midnight” is mentioned as a particular “hour.” Compare Acts 16:25 with Acts 16:33. “The third hour of the night” is named in Acts 23:23. This was about nine o’clock P. M.