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Acts 3:1-11 The lame man healed by Peter and John.

Acts 3:12-26 Peter declares to the people that this cure was not

wrought by any power or holiness in himself or John,

but by the power of God through faith in the name of

Jesus, whom they had ignorantly crucified, but whom

God had raised from the dead according to the

Scripture; exhorts them by faith to seek remission of

sins and salvation in Jesus, whose coming had been

spoken of by Moses and all the prophets.

Went up together into the temple; not to communicate with the Jews in their worship, which was now antiquated, but that they might have a larger field to sow the seed of the gospel into; and therefore it was most probably upon some sabbath or festival day, and not unlikely in the evening of that great day of Pentecost (of which in the former chapter).

At the hour of prayer: that God must be worshipped, and daily prayed unto, the law of nature and positive law of God requires; but, says Maimonides, there is no obligation by virtue of any command of God, unto any number of prayers, nor to any certain prayers, nor to any definite time of prayer. Howsoever, they did usually pray thrice a day, and thought each of those three times recommended unto them by one of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Howsoever, the time of offering up the morning and evening sacrifice was recommended or commanded by God, as a time of prayer; a sacrifice being an actual prayer, as the other is real or verbal.

The ninth hour; about three o’clock in the afternoon, the time of the evening sacrifice.

Verse 1. - Were going up for went up together, A.V. and T.R. Peter and John. The close friendship of these two apostles is remarkable. The origin of it appears to have been their partnership in the fishing-boats in which they pursued their trade as fishermen on the Sea of Galilee. For St. Luke tells us that the sons of Zebedee were "partners with Simon," and helped him to take the miraculous draught of fishes (Luke 5:10). We find the two sons of Zebedee associated with Peter in the inner circle of the Lord's apostles, at the Transfiguration, at the raising of Jairus's daughter, and at the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane (see also Mark 13:3). But the yet closer friendship of Peter and John first appears in their going together to the palace of Caiaphas on the night of the betrayal (John 18:15), and then in the memorable visit to the holy sepulcher on the morning of the Resurrection (John 20:2-4), and yet again in John 21:7, 20, 21. It is in strict and natural sequence to these indications in the Gospel that, on opening the first chapters of the Acts, we find Peter and John constantly acting together in the very van of the Christian army (see Acts 3:1, 3, 11; Acts 4:13, 19; Acts 8:14, 25). The hour of prayer; called in Luke 1:10, "the hour of incense," that is, the hour of the evening sacrifice, when the people stood outside in prayer, while the priest within offered the sacrifice and burnt the incense (see Acts 2:46, note). Hence the comparison in Psalm 141:2, "Let my prayer be set before thee as incense, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice."

III.

(1) Now Peter and John went up.—Better, were going up. The union of the two brings the narratives of the Gospels into an interesting connection with the Acts. They were probably about the same age (the idea that Peter was some years older than John rests mainly on the pictures which artists have drawn from their imagination, and has no evidence in Scripture), and had been friends from their youth upward. They had been partners as fishermen on the Sea of Galilee (Luke 5:10). They had been sharers in looking for the consolation of Israel, and had together received the baptism of John (John 1:41). John and Andrew had striven which should be the first to tell Peter that they had found the Christ (John 1:41). The two had been sent together to prepare for the Passover (Luke 22:8). John takes Peter into the palace of the high priest (John 18:16), and though he must have witnessed his denials is not estranged from him. It is to John that Peter turns for comfort after his fall, and with him he comes to the sepulchre on the morning of the Resurrection (John 20:6). The eager affection which, now more strongly than ever, bound the two together is seen in Peter’s question, “Lord, and what shall this man do?” (John 21:21); and now they are again sharers in action and in heart, in teaching and in worship. Passing rivalries there may have been, disputes which was the greatest, prayers for places on the right hand and the left (Matthew 20:20; Mark 10:35); but the idea maintained by Renan (Vie de Jésus, Introduction), that St. John wrote his Gospel to exalt himself at the expense of Peter, must take its place among the delirantium somnia, the morbid imaginations, of inventive interpretation. They appear in company again in the mission to Samaria (Acts 8:14), and in recognising the work that had been done by Paul and Barnabas among the Gentiles (Galatians 2:9). When it was that they parted never to meet again, we have no record. No account is given as to the interval that had passed since the Day of Pentecost. Presumably the brief notice at the end of Acts 2 was meant to summarise a gradual progress, marked by no striking incidents, which may have gone on for several months. The absence of chronological data in the Acts, as a book written by one who in the Gospel appears to lay stress on such matters (Luke 3:1; Luke 6:2), is somewhat remarkable. The most natural explanation is that he found the informants who supplied him with his facts somewhat uncertain on these points, and that, as a truthful historian, he would not invent dates.

At the hour of prayer, being the ninth hour—sc., 3 P.M., the hour of the evening sacrifice (Jos. Ant. xiv. 4, § 3). The traditions of later Judaism had fixed the third, the sixth, and the ninth hours of each day as times for private prayer. Daniel’s practice of praying three times a day seems to imply a rule of the same kind, and Psalm 55:17 (“evening and morning and at noon will I pray”) carries the practice up to the time of David. “Seven times a day” was, perhaps, the rule of those who aimed at a life of higher devotion (Psalm 119:164). Both practices passed into the usage of the Christian Church certainly as early as the second century, and probably therefore in the first. The three hours were observed by many at Alexandria in the time of Clement (Strom, vii. p. 722). The seven became the “canonical hours” of Western Christendom, the term first appearing in the Rule of St. Benedict (ob. A.D. 542) and being used by Bede (A.D. 701).

Acts 3:1-10. Healing of the lame man at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple

1. Now Peter and John went up together] The word together has been transferred to the previous verse. See the last note. The verb is in the imperfect tense, and would be more correctly rendered were going up. The Temple stood above the city on Mount Moriah.

into the temple] While earnestly labouring for the spread of Christ’s teaching, they did not cast off regard for that schoolmaster which had been appointed to bring men to Christ.

at the hour of prayer] The preposition indicates the period of time towards which their movement tended, and may be well rendered for the hour, &c. They were on their way, and would get there at the time appointed for prayer.

We read in Scripture of three specified hours of prayer, in accordance with which the Psalmist speaks of his own custom (Psalm 55:17), “Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray.” And in like manner Daniel prayed “three times a day” (Daniel 6:10). The hour of morning prayer was the third hour, and Peter went up to the housetop to pray (Acts 10:9) about the sixth hour, which was noon, and the evening prayer was this to which Peter and John were going up.

being the ninth hour] At the Equinox this would be three o’clock in the afternoon, but when the daylight was longer it would be later, so that if there were 18 hours day and 6 hours of darkness, each hour of the day would be an hour and a half long, and the hours of the night only half an hour each. At such time the ninth hour would be at half-past four.

Went up (ἀνέβαινον)

The imperfect: were going up. So Rev., ascending the terraces, on the highest of which the temple stood.

Ninth hour

The time of the evening sacrifice; or, as the words of prayer indicate, half an hour later, for the prayer which accompanied the offering of incense.

Were going up (ανεβαινον). Descriptive imperfect active. They were ascending the terraces to the temple courts. The ninth (την ενατην). Our three o'clock in the afternoon, the time of the evening sacrifice. Peter and John like Paul later kept up the Jewish worship, but not as a means of sacramental redemption. There were three hours of prayer (third, sixth, ninth).

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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 Psalm 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.

Acts 3:1. After the description of the first peaceful and prosperous life of the church, Luke now, glancing back to Acts 2:43, singles out from the multitude of apostolic τέρατα κ. σημεῖα that one with which the first persecution was associated.

ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό] here also in a local reference (see on Acts 1:15; comp. LXX: 2 Samuel 2:13; Joseph. Antt. xvi. 8. 6); not merely at the same time and for the same object, but also in the same way, i.e. together, יַחְדָּיו, 2 Sam. l.c. Prominence is here given to the united going to the temple and the united working, directing special attention to the keeping together of the two chief apostles.

ἀνέβαινον] they were in the act of going up.

ἐπὶ τὴν ὥραν τῆς προσευχῆς] ἐπί, used of the definition of time, in so far as a thing extends to a space of time; see on Mark 15:1; Nägelsb. on the Iliad, p. 284, ed. 3. Hence: during the hour, not equivalent to περὶ τὴν ὥραν (Alberti, Obss., Valckenaer, Winer, and many others). Concerning the three hours of prayer among the Jews: the third (see on Acts 2:15), the sixth (noon), and the ninth (that of the evening sacrifice in the temple), see Lightfoot, Schoettgen, and Wetstein, in loc. Comp. Acts 10:3; Acts 10:9.

The Attic mode of writing ἐνάτην is decidedly attested in the Book of Acts.