Cock-Crowing and Peter’s Denial
By Editor
To W. D. C.—On the subject of the harmony of the statements concerning the cock-crowing and Peter's denial of Christ, Dr. Clarke quotes and approves the remark of Dr. Lightfoot, that the actual meaning is: "the cock shall not have finished his crowing," etc. In regard to the repetition of the crowing, he says the Jews and some other nations "divided the cock-crowing into the first, the second, and the third times." We have always found that obscurities in Scripture relations are made clear when we fully understand the circumstances, and the customs of the times to which they relate. If Dr. Lightfoot was correct—if reference was made, not to the instances of cock-crowing, but to the times, or the entire period of cock-crowing—then it is not difficult to arrive at a harmonious solution of the apparent difficulty: