Acts 4:3

and put them in hold i.e. in prison. The word means ward, safe keeping. And it is worth noticing on the use of it, that the Jews only employed imprisonment for this precautionary purpose. It was not a mode of punishment with them, and where we find mention of it so used in the Scripture records, the authorities who inflicted it were not Jewish.

unto the next day: for it was now eventide The Jews were not allowed to give judgment in the night, and their day ceased with the twelfth hour. It was already about the ninth hour when Peter and John were going up to the Temple (Acts 3:1), so that before the address of Peter and the arrest of him and John was completed it would be too late to enter on a judicial enquiry. The Rabbis founded the prohibition on Jeremiah 21:12, "O house of David, thus saith the Lord, Execute judgment in the morning." In Mishna Sanhedriniv. 1 it is said: "Judgments about money may be commenced in the day and concluded in the night, but judgments about life must be begun in the day and concluded in the day." And even the rule about the declaration of the new moon, which was looked on as a judicial proceeding, is similarly regulated (Mishna Rosh ha-Shanahiii. 1), and it may not be declared unless the examination of the witnesses, and all other preliminaries enjoined before its proclamation, be completed before dark.