Acts 3:1

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

1. Now Peter and John went up together The word togetherhas 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 (Psalms 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.