Charles Ellicott Commentary John 4:52

"So he inquired of them the hour when he began to amend. They said therefore unto him, Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him." — John 4:52 (ASV)

Then he inquired of them.—But were these two facts—the assurance at Cana, and the actual healing powers at Capernaum—truly related to each other? He remembers the hour at which one was spoken; he inquires about the hour at which the other was realized. He does not even now grasp the full meaning of the words. He thinks of the gradual abatement of the fever and the slow convalescence, and asks when the child “began to amend.” They have seen the sudden change, as if a new power passed into the body on the point of death. They have spoken of this as a new life, and they now think of the fever as having completely left him.

Yesterday at the seventh hour.—We have seen (John 1:39) that there is no sufficient reason for thinking that St. John uses the Western method of counting the hours of the day. Still less is it likely that Galilean servants, who are the speakers here, would have done so. Moreover, to believe that it was seven o’clock in the morning or evening adds to, and does not remove, the difficulty of the length of time implied in “yesterday.” To say that the father remained some time with Jesus, and that “the believer doth not make haste,” is to pervert both the spirit and the words of the text.

He clearly went at once (John 4:50), and his anxiety naturally quickened his speed. The distance was not more than twenty-five English miles, and he had not travelled the whole of it, for the servants had gone to meet him. The supposed explanation, therefore, does not truly explain anything.

But the words, if taken in their simple meaning, involve no such difficulty. These Jews, like all Jews, meant by the “seventh hour” the seventh hour from sunrise, which we would call one o’clock. After sunset that same evening, they would have begun a new day (compare Excursus F.), and this seventh hour would be to them like one o’clock the day before, or the seventh hour of yesterday. We thus have an interval of five or six hours between the words spoken by our Lord and their confirmation by the servants.