The length of days and hours has not changed significantly since the time of Jesus in the 1st century AD. However, people in Jesus’s time did not have accurate timekeeping devices like we have today, so their experience of the passage of time was likely different than ours. The movements of the sun and moon guided their sense of time. Let’s take a closer look at how time was reckoned in Jesus’s day and how many hours made up their days.
Hours of daylight
The number of hours of daylight in a day varies over the course of the year due to the tilt of the Earth’s axis of rotation relative to its orbit around the sun. This tilt is what causes the seasons. At the latitude of Israel, where Jesus lived, there are roughly 14 hours of daylight at the summer solstice in June, and 10 hours at the winter solstice in December.
On the spring and fall equinoxes in March and September, the day and night hours are closest to being equal, with 12 hours each. So in general there were between 10-14 daylight hours in ancient Israel.
The Jewish day
In the time of Jesus, the Jewish people divided the day into 12 equal hours from sunrise to sunset. So the length of an “hour” varied depending on the seasons – longer in summer, shorter in winter.
Since sunrise in Israel is around 6am and sunset around 6pm in spring and fall, the 12 daylight hours were around 60 minutes long at those times of year. In summer the hours were longer and in winter they were shorter.
The Jewish people also divided the night into 12 “hours”, meaning hours of darkness. So the daylight hours were numbered starting at sunrise (roughly 6am), while the nighttime hours were numbered starting at sunset (around 6pm).
Examples of hour lengths
Here are some examples of how long hours lasted at different times of year:
| Season | Sunrise | Sunset | Daylight Hours | Length of “Hour” |
| Summer Solstice | 5:30am | 7:30pm | 14 | 70 minutes |
| Fall/Spring Equinox | 6:00am | 6:00pm | 12 | 60 minutes |
| Winter Solstice | 6:30am | 4:30pm | 10 | 50 minutes |
As you can see, the further you got from the spring/fall equinoxes, the longer or shorter the daylight “hours” became.
Night hours
The night was similarly divided into 12 “hours” from sunset to sunrise. On the equinoxes, these would be 60 minutes long as well. In the summer the night hours would be shorter, and in winter longer.
So even though the Romans had started dividing their days into 24 equal hours of 60 minutes, the Jewish people retained their tradition of 12 variable daylight hours and 12 nighttime hours.
Sundials and water clocks
Without accurate clocks and watches like we have today, how did people tell time in Jesus’s day? Two common methods were sundials and water clocks.
Sundials use the position of a shadow cast by the sun to mark the passage of time. Obviously these only work when the sun is out. The sundial would be marked with lines for each of the 12 daylight hours.
Water clocks used an inflow and outflow of water to measure elapsed time. A tank was marked with 12 lines for the hours. Water would drain from the tank at a steady rate, allowing fairly consistent time measurement even at night.
However, these devices were still much less accurate than modern timepieces when it came to precisely measuring minutes and seconds.
The Roman day
While the Jewish people used their traditional system of 12 variable hours, the Romans had started dividing the day into 24 equal hours.
The Romans also marked midnight as the beginning of the new day. In contrast, the Jewish day started at sunset. This difference caused some confusion when references were made to precise times, such as in describing the resurrection accounts in the Gospels.
Reckoning of hours in Jesus’s words
There are hints that Jesus and his followers understood there were basically 12 hours of daylight and 12 nighttime hours:
Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world.” (John 11:9)
“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” (James 4:13-17)
Here Jesus and James acknowledge the idea that there are about 12 hours in a day, even if the lengths of those hours were not fixed.
The Gospels also contain references to specific hours that make use of the Jewish method of numbering daylight hours starting at sunrise:
And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46)
As he was drawing near—already on the way down the Mount of Olives—the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.” And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of robbers.” And he was teaching daily in the temple. The chief priests and the scribes and the principal men of the people were seeking to destroy him, but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were hanging on his words.” (Luke 19:37-48)
Here Luke notes the “ninth hour” was approaching as Jesus entered Jerusalem, or about 3pm as the hours would have been counted from sunrise.
Hours of prayer
In Jesus’s time, observant Jews had hours of prayer that structured their day. Based on verses in the Psalms, prayer times were set for the following hours:
- The third hour – approximately 9am
- The sixth hour – approximately noon
- The ninth hour – approximately 3pm
We see a reference to this practice in Acts:
Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour. (Acts 3:1)
The routine rhythm of prayer would have helped orient Jewish people to the passage of time through the daylight hours.
Night watches
The night was similarly divided into set “watches” for purposes of guard duty:
“Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them recline at table, and he will come and serve them. If he comes in the second watch, or in the third, and finds them awake, blessed are those servants! But know this, that if the master of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have left his house to be broken into.” (Luke 12:37-39)
This passage references the second and third watches. There were originally three night watches, though by Roman times there were often four watches:
- First watch – 6pm to 9pm
- Second watch – 9pm to midnight
- Third watch – midnight to 3am
- Fourth watch – 3am to 6am
The watches would also have helped reckon nighttime hours before sunrise reset the count.
Day and night symbolic meaning
Beyond telling time, the contrast of day and night also gained symbolic significance in Jesus’s teachings and the writings of the early church:
“We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work.” (John 9:4)
“And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.” (John 3:19)
“You are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness.” (1 Thessalonians 5:5)
The coming of Christ was associated with light coming into the world. His followers were to walk in the light of Christ and shun the darkness of evil.
So the cycles of day and night took on deeper meaning regarding the spiritual struggle between good and evil.
Conclusion
In summary, a day in Jesus’s time was reckoned as 12 variable daylight hours between sunrise and sunset, with another 12 nighttime hours until the next sunrise. Hours were measured approximately with sundials and water clocks, but were not fixed at 60 minutes as we think of hours today.
The length of daylight hours varied from around 10 hours in winter to 14 in summer in the region of Israel. The routine Jewish hours of prayer (third, sixth, ninth hours) helped structure their days. Night was similarly divided into four watches.
Beyond telling time, the contrast of day and night gained rich symbolic meaning in Jesus’s teachings about light versus darkness, good versus evil. So the experience of the passage of time in Jesus’s day was mediated through changing seasonal hours and spiritual associations attached to the cycles of light and darkness.
