The Hours on the Cross

It was still the thirteenth, the day that had begun the evening before with the supper. The night of the arrest and the trials had passed, and so had the morning before Pilate and Herod. Now came the daytime of the thirteenth, the hours on the cross at Golgotha, outside the city.

The Gospels mark these hours with care. They name three of them: the third hour, the sixth, and the ninth. To read them rightly, we need to know how the hours of the day were counted.

How the Hours Were Counted

Yeshua once asked His disciples a question that tells us how His own generation reckoned the daylight.

John 11:9 Yeshua answered, "Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world.

The daylight was divided into twelve hours, counted from morning. The third hour was about 9 a.m., the sixth hour was about noon, and the ninth hour was about 3 p.m. These are the only hours the Gospels name for the cross, and they are the only ones we need.

This counting of the daylight hours does not change the biblical day itself, which still begins with evening. The twelve hours belong to the daytime portion of that day. The night of the thirteenth had come first; the daytime of the thirteenth came after it, and its hours were counted from the morning.

The Third Hour

Mark gives the hour at which Yeshua was crucified in a single short sentence.

Mark 15:25 It was the third hour when they crucified Him.

The third hour is about 9 a.m., in the daytime of the thirteenth. Matthew describes what the soldiers did next.

Matthew 27:35-38 And when they had crucified Him, they divided up His garments among themselves by casting lots. And sitting down, they began to keep watch over Him there. And above His head they put up the charge against Him which read: "THIS IS YESHUA(JESUS) THE KING OF THE JEWS." At that time two robbers were crucified with Him, one on the right and one on the left.

Those who passed by mocked Him, and so did the chief priests with the scribes and elders. “He saved others; He cannot save Himself!” (Matthew 27:42). Some of them threw back at Him the very charge the false witnesses had brought in the night: “You who are going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save Yourself!” (Matthew 27:40).

The Sixth Hour

At the middle of the day something happened that no one standing at Golgotha could miss.

Matthew 27:45 Now from the sixth hora ὥρα ho'-rah(hour) darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hora(hour).

From the sixth hour to the ninth is from about noon until about 3 p.m. Luke adds in plain words, “and the sun was darkened” (Luke 23:45). For three hours the cross stood in that darkness.

The Ninth Hour

Matthew 27:46-50 About the ninth hora(hour) Yeshua cried out with a loud voice, saying: "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" — that is, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" And some of those who were standing there, when they heard it, began saying: "This man is calling for Elijah." Immediately one of them ran and took a sponge and filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed and gave Him a drink. But the rest of them said: "Let us see whether Elijah will come to save Him." And Yeshua cried out again with a loud voice and gave up His pneuma πνεῦμα pnyoo'-mah(spirit).

At about the ninth hour He cried out with a loud voice, and then, crying out again, He “gave up His pneuma(spirit).” Mark says that He “uttered a loud cry and breathed His last” (Mark 15:37). Luke records His prayer: “Father, into Your hands I commit My pneuma(spirit)” (Luke 23:46).

It was the ninth hour, about 3 p.m., in the daytime of the thirteenth. The Messiah died on the day John calls “the preparation day for the Passover” (John 19:14).

John records the last word He spoke before He gave up His pneuma(spirit).

John 19:30 Therefore when Yeshua had received the sour wine, He said, "It is finished!" And He bowed His head and gave up His pneuma(spirit).

He spoke those words on the preparation day, and it had to be so. For the Passover to be offered on the fourteenth, He had to die on the day of its preparation; without the atonement of the cross on that day, the offering on the fourteenth would have been impossible.

The Hour of the Passover Offerings

Now set this hour beside what we read in Chapters 28 to 30.

The Passover lamb was kept as a charge “before(ad עד) the fourteenth day,” and the whole assembly offered it “between the evenings,” in the evening that opens the fourteenth. So many households could not have done all the work of their offerings in that one evening, at one place. The offerings had to be made ready beforehand, in the daytime of the thirteenth. As the afternoon of the thirteenth wore on, that work was under way, so that when evening came on and the fourteenth began, the people could offer the Passover to the LORD.

Yeshua died at the ninth hour of that same afternoon. He died at the hour when the Passover offerings were being made ready, while the work of the preparation day was going on, before the evening of the fourteenth had come. The timetable of the Torah and the timetable of the cross meet at this hour.

Paul did not write that the Messiah resembled the Passover in a general way. He wrote that “Messiah our Passover has been sacrificed for us” (1 Corinthians 5:7). The calendar of the Gospels, read by the Bible’s own reckoning of the day, shows this to be true down to the hour.

The First Daytime

These hours also open the count that Yeshua Himself set as His sign. “For just as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights” (Matthew 12:40).

As we saw in Chapter 2, the Hebrew of Jonah names the daytimes first and the nights after them: “three days and three nights” (YLV Jonah 2:1, Masoretic verse order). The count of the sign begins with a daytime, and the first of the three is the daytime of the thirteenth, because in that daytime He entered death.

The night of the thirteenth, with the arrest and the trials, is not one of the three nights. It came before His death. The three nights still lie ahead: the night of the fourteenth, the night of the fifteenth, and the night of the sixteenth. Chapter 43 will count them one by one.

What the Hours Say

Look again at the three hours the Gospels name. At the third hour they crucified Him. From the sixth hour darkness covered the land. At the ninth hour He cried out and gave up His pneuma(spirit). Each of these hours lies within the daytime of the thirteenth. None of them crosses into the fourteenth. The whole of His suffering on the cross took place on the preparation day, before the Passover began.

But the day was not yet over. His body still hung on the cross, and the evening that would open the fourteenth was drawing near. The next chapter follows Joseph of Arimathea to Pilate and to the tomb, in the afternoon, before that evening came.