Mark says that Jesus was crucified at “the third hour.” A modern reader who sees those words may picture three in the morning, or three in the afternoon, or have no picture at all. The first readers knew exactly what was meant: about nine in the morning, three hours after sunrise.
The Bible comes from cultures that counted time differently from us. Their hours had no fixed length, their days began in the evening, their months followed the moon, and their counting of days included the first and the last. A translation has to decide where to explain all this: in the text, in a note, or not at all.
Hours counted from sunrise
In the time of Jesus, Jews, Greeks and Romans divided the daylight into twelve hours. Jesus assumes it: “Are there not twelve hours of the day?” (John 11:9). The hours were counted from sunrise, so the first hour began at about six in the morning, the third hour was mid-morning, the sixth was noon and the ninth was mid-afternoon. An hour was longer in summer than in winter. Times of day were usually given loosely, and the Gospels often say “about.”
The Greek word is ὥρα (hōra), and the phrase in Mark 15:25 is simply ὥρα τρίτη, “hour third.” Mark marks the day of the crucifixion in three-hour steps: Jesus is crucified at the third hour, darkness falls at the sixth, and at the ninth he cries out the words of Psalm 22 (Mark 15:25, 33–34).
The King James Version kept the ancient count; most modern translations give a clock time. Open Word Bible’s three levels divide the work. The meaning decision for Mark 15:25 says that the third hour was “about nine in the morning,” because the hours of daylight were counted from sunrise. Literal keeps the ancient wording, and the other two levels give the time as we count it:
Now it was the third hour, and they crucified him.
It was nine in the morning when they crucified him.
The same pattern runs through the drafts. At Pentecost, Peter says the disciples cannot be drunk, because it is only “the third hour of the day” (Acts 2:15). Balanced keeps both the count and the clock: “The day is only three hours old; it is nine in the morning.”
John’s hours
John’s Gospel names the hour of the day more often than the other Gospels, and it raises a question. When Andrew and another disciple first follow Jesus, they stay with him, and “it was about the tenth hour” (John 1:39). Jesus sits by the well in Samaria at “about the sixth hour” (4:6). Pilate brings Jesus out to the crowd at “about the sixth hour” (19:14).
That last time is the difficulty. Mark puts the crucifixion at the third hour, mid-morning. John has Jesus still before Pilate at about noon. Readers have noticed this since the early centuries. One proposed solution is that John counts the hours from midnight, as some Roman reckoning did, so that his “sixth hour” is six in the morning. Others find the evidence for such a count thin, or point out that both writers give round, approximate times. A few manuscripts of Mark even read “sixth” for “third,” bringing it into line with John.
Open Word Bible does not settle the question. It takes John’s hours as counted from sunrise, which is how most scholars read them, and says so in every place. Balanced and Readable give “about four in the afternoon” for 1:39 and “about noon” for 4:6 and 19:14. A footnote in each place gives the literal wording and the other way of counting. In 19:14, the note adds that the difference from Mark “is noted here, not settled.” Mark’s footnote records the manuscripts that read “sixth.”
Watches of the night
The night was divided into watches, the shifts of those who stood guard. The Old Testament speaks of three: the beginning of the watches (Lamentations 2:19), the middle watch, when Gideon attacked the Midianite camp (Judges 7:19), and the morning watch, when the LORD threw the Egyptian army into panic at the sea (Exodus 14:24). The Romans divided the night into four watches of about three hours each, and the Gospels often use that system.
So when Matthew says that Jesus came to the disciples “in the fourth watch of the night,” walking on the water (Matthew 14:25), he means the last part of the night, roughly three to six in the morning. The disciples had been rowing against the wind for most of the night. Our Balanced level says “in the last watch of the night,” and Readable gives the hours: “Sometime between three and six o’clock in the morning.”
Mark 13:35 names the four Roman watches by their popular names: evening, midnight, rooster-crow and early morning. The record notes, as uncertain, that the same four times mark the story of Jesus’s last night in Mark, from the evening meal to the rooster’s crow and the council meeting early in the morning.
Days that begin at evening
In Israel the day began at sunset. The pattern is set in the first chapter of Genesis: “there was evening and there was morning, day one.” The Hebrew puts עֶ֥רֶב (ʿerev, evening) before בֹ֖קֶר (bōqer, morning). The record for Genesis 1:5 notes that the day is counted from evening, as Israel’s days were counted from sunset.
The law states it outright for the Day of Atonement: “from evening to evening you shall keep your sabbath” (Leviticus 23:32). Our Readable level makes the times explicit: from sunset on the ninth day of the month “until sunset the next day.”
This explains details in the Gospels that can seem odd. Jesus died on the afternoon of the day of Preparation, the day before the Sabbath, and he had to be buried before sunset, when the Sabbath began. The women could not come to the tomb until the Sabbath was over.
Months and the moon
The Hebrew word for month, חֹדֶשׁ (ḥōdesh), also means “new moon.” Israel’s months were lunar, each beginning with the new moon and lasting twenty-nine or thirty days. Twelve lunar months fall about eleven days short of the solar year, so from time to time a thirteenth month had to be added to keep the festivals in their seasons.
The Bible uses three ways of naming months.
- Numbers. Most often a month is simply “the first month,” “the seventh month,” and so on.
- Old Canaanite names. A few early names survive: Abib, the month of the exodus (Exodus 13:4), Ziv (1 Kings 6:1), Ethanim (1 Kings 8:2) and Bul (1 Kings 6:38). Abib means “fresh ears of grain”; it is the month when the barley ripened.
- Babylonian names. After the exile, Jews used the month names of Babylon, which the Jewish calendar still uses. Nisan (Nehemiah 2:1; Esther 3:7), Sivan (Esther 8:9), Elul (Nehemiah 6:15), Kislev (Nehemiah 1:1), Tevet (Esther 2:16), Shevat (Zechariah 1:7) and Adar (Esther 3:7) appear in the Bible.
Abib and Nisan are the same month, in March and April. Exodus 12:2 makes it the head of the year, the first of the months. Yet Exodus also speaks of the harvest feast “at the end of the year” (23:16), counting from the autumn. The record for 12:2 notes that the verse fixes the order of the sacred year without ruling out the other reckoning, which survives in the Jewish New Year in the autumn.
Open Word Bible keeps the month names at every level, because they are names. The meaning decision says when the month fell, and Readable often adds a few words: “in the month of Abib, in early spring” (Exodus 13:4).
Inclusive counting
The most important difference is also the easiest to miss. In the ancient world, a span of days was normally counted inclusively: the first day and the last were both counted, even if only part of each was meant.
Esther tells the Jews of Susa to fast for her for three days, “night or day” (Esther 4:16), and she goes to the king “on the third day” (5:1), before the three days are complete. In 1 Samuel 30:12–13, an Egyptian who had not eaten “for three days and three nights” says that he fell sick “three days ago.”
This is the background to the sayings about Jesus’s resurrection. Jesus says that “the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40), and elsewhere that he will be raised “on the third day” (16:21) or “after three days” (Mark 8:31). He died on Friday afternoon and rose early on Sunday. By our count that is less than two days. By the ancient count, Friday, Saturday and Sunday are three days.
Open Word Bible does not change “three days and three nights” in Matthew 12:40, because that is what Jesus said, and it echoes Jonah. Instead the meaning decision, with a footnote, explains it as “a way of counting parts of three days,” not seventy-two hours, citing 1 Samuel 30 and Esther. In Mark 8:31, the decision says that “after three days” means “by the third day, counting in the Jewish way.”
Where an idiom of inclusive counting would mislead an English reader, the levels do change it. When Thomas sees the risen Jesus “after eight days” (John 20:26), he means the next Sunday. Literal keeps “after eight days.” Balanced says “A week later,” and Readable adds “on the next Sunday.”
Why the levels differ here
Time words show plainly why Open Word Bible gives each sentence at three levels (see Literal, Balanced, Readable: three levels, one meaning). “The third hour” is the Bible’s own way of speaking; “nine in the morning” is what it means. The meaning decision behind both is the same. These are AI-assisted drafts, not yet reviewed.
For a related question, how much a talent was or how long a cubit, see Weights, measures and money. For idioms more generally, see Biblical idioms.
Open Mark 15, John 19 or Matthew 14 to see the records for each hour.