The Quiver, 1/1900

by Anonymous

But the rough and ready indications of hours, supplied by the progress of the day from dawn to darkness, were quite enough for the men and women of the earlier Hebrew centuries, and if we are willing to shake off our Occidental precision and the tyranny of Greenwich, many a Bible scene would take a place upon the clock with moderate exactitude. It is in the glow of the rising sun that Abraham gazes upon the destruction of Sodom, that Jacob beholds the face of the Unknown who has wrestled with him at Peniel, that Achan is marked out before the congregation for the doom of his theft, that Hannah asks God so earnestly for the son for whom she longs; that poor, over-persuaded Darius hastens to the den of lions, to see whether his faithful favourite Daniel is alive. It is in the very early hours that Giant Goliath struts out to defy the armies of the living God, and that fair Rebekah rides away, with the day-spring on her face, to meet the love which has been predestined for her, beyond the plains of Padan-aram. It is in the heat of the day that the three mysterious Visitors greet Abraham at his tent door, and that Saul completes the slaughter of the Ammonites and wins the hearts of his people. It is at high noon that Joseph provides Benjamin with a dinner five times as large as that of his other brothers, in the sunny courts of Pharaoh, and that Ishbosheth's siesta leads to his assassination at the hands of the sons of Rimmon. It is towards evening that the weary dove returns to the ark's refuge, that Joshua takes down the bodies of the five kings from their gibbet, that Ezekiel's wife dies, and that the haunted life of King Ahab ebbs painfully away. The night scenes are numerous. It is in the darkness that the hosts of Sennacherib are destroyed, that the awful cry is heard in Egypt on the death of the first-born, and that, while Belshazzar banquets, the Angel of Death "is whetting his sword upon the stones of Babylon." We survey these pictures, so far as their exact hour is concerned, through the haze of Oriental indefiniteness, but they have been limned for ever by the genius of inspiration upon the retina of universal humanity.

When we come to New Testament times we are, at least by comparison, on more reliable ground. It was certainly Roman influence which brought the system of hours into Palestine. That this system existed in our Lord's day is undoubted. "Are there not twelve hours in the day?" said Jesus Christ Himself.

There were two modes of reckoning, one used by St. John and the other by the rest of the New Testament writers. St. John counts his hours just as we do, from midnight to noon and from noon to midnight. His fellow-evangelists reckon from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. and from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., according to the ordinary Jewish fashion. We may add in passing that the Romans divided the night not into three but into four watches. These watches lasted three hours each. Thus, when Christ appeared to His disciples walking on the sea "in the fourth watch of the night," it must have been some time between 3 and 6 a.m.

Let us now say a few things about the big, bald clock face, with no hands, with which we have furnished those who are jogging along with us on our chronological quest. Our clock makes a bold attempt (the first, so far as we know) to fix a Scripture event on to each hour of the twenty-four. We do not profess that the proofs which we can offer for the time of each event are equally sound, but we have made it a rule that sheer guess-work should never be employed. Consequently, there is a partial failure. We have succeeded in discovering no reasonably probable event for 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. May we console ourselves with the reflection that in Eastern countries most people during those hours are asleep? Except as regards the particular incidents we are about to consider, we will leave our big clock to tick his own tale. Whatever his faults, he is not half as much of a story-teller as another of his kind would be, who had been neglected in a lumber room for over twenty centuries. Let us, however, just defend one or two selections which might seem groundless or arbitrary. What authority have we for alleging that our Lord's friends endeavoured to arrest Him, as being "beside Himself," at 11 a.m.? This. St. Mark shows us in his minute and vivid way that owing to the insistency of the crowd the Master and His disciples could not take their meal. The usual hour for this would be about eleven in the morning. Then we have ventured to place the feeding of the five thousand about 4 p.m.; for the month was April, and St. Luke tells us that "the day began to wear away." We cannot, therefore, be very far out. Again, Jairus would hardly have come to our Lord before late in the afternoon, for Christ had had a long day and a voyage over the lake; the people also were waiting as though they expected Him earlier. And since the two Maries and Salome would be all eagerness to procure their spices for the anointing of Christ's body, and could not buy them till the Sabbath ended at six, they would not accomplish their shopping later than 7 p.m.

Now let us take out our watches and check them by our big clock. We will picture for ourselves some scenes in Old and New Testament history at the hour in which they happened. For such hours the evidence is in most of our instances good, and in the rest more than tolerable. Our selections shall start from 2 a.m. and go on in due order up to midnight.

2 A.M.

At this hour, when the stay-at-home often awakes for a little after his "first sleep," and the modern roysterer is thinking about his pillow, St. Peter stood in the glare of the coal fire, while darkness still shrouded the most dreadful night in history. St. Luke (xxii. 59) clearly tells us that there was an hour's interval between the denials. We may well believe that the nerves of the sturdy but emotional apostle were all on edge from the surprises and horrors through which he had already passed. Scared or nettled by the inquiry of a sharp maid-servant, he takes the primary step in a sin of which the very blackness is a beacon for aftertime of the far-reaching power of divine forgiveness.

4 A.M.