John 1:39

Come and see The more probable reading gives, Come and ye shall see.

they came Insert, therefore.

that day That memorable day.

it was about the tenth hour S. John remembers the very hour of this crisis in his life: all the details of the narrative are very lifelike.

It is sometimes contended that S. John reckons the hours of the day according to the modern method, from midnight to midnight, and not according to the Jewishmethod, from sunset to sunset, as everywhere else in N.T. and in Josephus. It is antecedently improbable that S. John should in this point vary from the rest of N.T. writers; and we ought to require strong evidence before accepting this theory, which has been adopted mainly in order to escape from the difficulty of John 19:14, where see notes. Setting aside John 19:14 as the cause of the question, we have four passages in which S. John mentions the hour of the day, this, John 4:6; John 4:52 and John 11:9. None of them are decisive: but in no single case is the balance of probability strongly in favour of the modern method. See notes in each place. Here either 10 a.m. or 4 p.m. would suit the context: and while the antecedent probability that S. John reckons time like the rest of the Evangelists will incline us to 4 p.m., the fact that a good deal still remains to be done on this day makes 10 a.m. rather more suitable. Origen knows nothing of S. John's using the modern method of reckoning.