Acts 3:1

St. Luke selects out of the number of τέρατα καὶ σημεῖα the one which was the immediate antecedent of the first persecution. “Non dicitur primum hoc miraculum fuisse, sed fuit, quanquam unum e multis, ipso loco maxime conspicuum,” Blass, as against Weiss, Hilgenfeld, Feine. ἀνέβαινον, cf. Luke 18:10. “Two men went up into the Temple to pray,” i.e., from the lower city to Mount Moriah, the hill of the Temple, “the hill of the house,” on its site see “Jerusalem,” B.D. 2. The verb is in the imperfect, because the Apostles do not enter the Temple until Acts 3:8. St. Chrysostom comments: Πέτρος καὶ Ἰωάννης ἦσαν καὶ τὸν Ἰησοῦν εἶχον μέσον, Matthew 18:20. ἐπὶ τὴν ὥραν τῆς προσευχῆς, not during or about, but marking a definite time, for the hour, i.e., to be there during the hour sometimes the words are taken to mean “towards the hour”: see Plummer on Luke 10:35 (so apparently Weiss). Page renders “for, i.e., to be there at the hour” (so Felten, Lumby). In going thus to the Temple they imitated their Master, Matthew 26:55. τὴν ἐνάτην, i.e., 3 P.M., when the evening sacrifice was offered, Jos., Ant., xiv., 4, 3. Edersheim points out that although the evening sacrifice was fixed by the Jews as “between the evenings,” i.e., between the darkness of the gloaming and that of the night, and although the words of Psalms 134, and the appointment of Levite singers for night service, 1 Chronicles 9:33; 1 Chronicles 23:30, seem to imply an evening service, yet in the time of our Lord the evening sacrifice commenced much earlier, The Temple; its Ministry and Services, pp. 115, 116. According to Schürer, followed by Blass who appeals to the authority of Hamburger, there is no ground for supposing that the third, sixth, and ninth hours of the day were regular stated times for prayer. The actual times were rather (1) early in the morning at the time of the morning sacrifice (see also Edersheim, u. s., p. 115); (2) in the afternoon about the ninth hour (three o'clock), at the time of the evening sacrifice; (3) in the evening at sunset (Jewish People, div. ii., vol. i., 290, E.T.). The third, sixth, and ninth hours were no doubt appropriated to private prayer, and some such rule might well have been derived from Psalms 55:7; cf. Daniel 6:11. This custom of prayer three times a day passed very early into the Christian Church, Didache 1, viii. 3. To Abraham, Isaac and Jacob the three daily times of prayer are traced back in the Berachoth, 26 b; Charles, Apocalypse of Baruch, p. 99.