Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 3:1

"Now Peter and John were going up into the temple at the hour of prayer, [being] the ninth [hour]." — Acts 3:1 (ASV)

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.

They had been partners as fishermen on the Sea of Galilee (Luke 5:10). They had shared in looking for the consolation of Israel, and had together received the baptism of John (John 1:41).

John and Andrew had striven to see 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, he 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 about who 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 Saint 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 recognizing the work that had been done by Paul and Barnabas among the Gentiles (Galatians 2:9). When they parted, never to meet again, we have no record.

No account is given of the interval that had passed since the Day of Pentecost. Presumably, the brief notice at the end of Acts 2:0 was meant to summarize 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—that is, 3 P.M., the hour of the evening sacrifice (Josephus, Antiquities 14.4.3). 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 Psalms 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 (Psalms 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 (Stromata 7, p. 722). The seven became the “canonical hours” of Western Christendom, the term first appearing in the Rule of Saint Benedict (ob. A.D. 542) and being used by Bede (A.D. 701).