the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Dictionaries
Cock-Crowing
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or COCK-CROWING (ἀλεκτοροφωνία).—The word occurs only in Mark 13:35, where it is evidently used to designate the third of four parts into which the night was divided—‘at even, or at midnight, or at the cock-crowing, or in the morning.’ In OT times there were only three watches in the night—the first, the middle, and the last; but by the time of Christ the Roman division into four watches had become common, though it had not altogether superseded the threefold division of the Jews. The night was reckoned, roughly speaking, from our 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., and these twelve hours were divided into four watches of three hours each. Jerome says: ‘Nox in quatuor vigilias dividitur, quae singulae trium horarum spatio supputantur’ (Ep. cxl. 8). The cock-crowing in Mark 13:35 thus refers to the third watch of the night, between the hours of 12 and 3.
Although the noun ‘cock-crowing’ occurs only once in the NT, each of the four Evangelists records the fact that on the night of the betrayal Jesus forewarned Peter that before the cock crew he should thrice deny his Lord, and each of them also records a crowing of the cock immediately after the denial (Matthew 26:34; Matthew 26:74-75, Luke 22:34; Luke 22:60-61, John 13:38; John 18:27). In St. Mark we have the variations—all the more significant because of the writer’s commonly acknowledged dependence upon the Petrine tradition—that Jesus said to Peter, ‘Before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice’; and in correspondence with this a record of two distinct cock-crowings (Mark 14:30; Mark 14:68; Mark 14:72).
Attempts have been made to distinguish between these two cock-crowings in St. Mark as occurring at definite seasons of the night, the one about midnight and the other at the first approach of dawn, just before the commencement of the fourth or morning watch, and to define the second of the two as the gallicinium proper, and consequently the only one of which the other three Evangelists take notice. No doubt it is true that in the most distinctive sense of the word ‘the cock-crowing,’ as an indication of time, refers to the breaking of the dawn; thus in the Talmud it is prescribed that at cock-crow the benediction shall be used: ‘Praised be Thou, O God, the Lord of the world, that givest understanding to the cock to distinguish between day and night.’ But as a matter of fact cocks crow during the night, in the East as elsewhere, at irregular times from midnight onward; and the narrative of Mark 14:66-72 does not suggest that there was an interval of anything like three hours between the first cock-crowing and the second. The probability is that Jesus meant no more than this, that before Peter himself had twice heard the cock crow he should thrice have been guilty of his great denial. And if we accept St. Mark’s narrative as embodying Peter’s own account of the incident, it will seem natural that the disciple to whom the warning was directly addressed, and on whom it would make the deepest impression, should distinguish between two separate cock-crowings where others thought only of the last.
There is no mention of the cock in the Mosaic law, and the supposed allusion to the breed in 1 Kings 4:23 (בַּרבּרִים, translated ‘fatted fowls’ both in Authorized Version and Revised Version NT 1881, OT 1885) is very doubtful. It may be that Solomon had imported these birds from the East; but, on the other hand, the fact that in the Talmudical literature the cock is always called by the name tarnĕgôl (חַּרְנִנּוֹל), suggests rather that it was introduced into Palestine from Babylonia.* [Note: A reference to the cock is found by some scholars in Proverbs 30:31 (EV ‘greyhound’), where the וַרְוִיד (îr) of MT is rendered by the LXX ἀλέκτωρ; similarly Aquila and Theodotion, the Peshitta (‘ăbhakhâ) and the Vulgate ().] But while the domestic fowl was quite familiar to the Jews of our Lord’s time, both the Mishna and the Midrash state that, so long as the Temple stood, the breeding or keeping of cocks in Jerusalem was forbidden, on the ground that by scratching in the earth they dug up unclean things, thus spreading the contagion of Levitical uncleanness, and even contaminating the sacrifices of the altar. On this ground exception has sometimes been taken, especially from Jewish sources, to the statements of the Evangelists as to the crowing of the cock in Jerusalem on the night before the crucifixion. But if such an ordinance existed, it is very unlikely that it could be strictly enforced in a city like Jerusalem, with a large and mixed population. In particular, we must remember that cock-fighting was one of the favourite sports of the Romans; and the Roman soldiers of the garrison would concern themselves very little about any Jewish prohibition of this kind.
Literature.—Grimm-Thayer, Lexicon, s.v. ἀλεκτοροφωνία; Smith’s Lat.-English Dict. s.v. ‘Vigilia’; Meyer’s Commentary on Matthew; Lange’s Life of Christ; Andrews, Life of our Lord upon the Earth, p. 521; Encyc. Bibl. and Jewish Encyclopedia, articles ‘Cock’ and ‘Day’; Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible, articles ‘Cock’ and ‘Time,’ cf. Extra Vol. p. 477 f.
J. C. Lambert.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Cock-Crowing'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/c/cock-crowing.html. 1906-1918.
