What Hour?

So he inquired of them the hour when he began to get better. Then they said to him, "Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him." So the father knew that it was at that hour in which Jesus said to him, "Your son lives"; and he himself believed and his whole household. (John 4:52-53)

Another detail in this story began to emerge into the light for me yesterday. It has to do with this reference to the time of day that this man's son was healed. I have come to believe that nearly every detail of these stories, particularly in the gospel of John, are usually significant even when it seems easy to assume that they are nothing more than fillers for stories. I have learned that when attention is paid to what appears at first to be incidental details, the Spirit can open up astonishing new connections and insights that may have never been uncovered before from only a cursory reading of the passages.

It says here that the royal official's discussion with Jesus climaxed right around the seventh hour of the day which is roughly one o'clock in the afternoon in our current time usage. It is easy to assume that this is mentioned solely because the man used this bit of information to affirm his faith and the new faith of his whole household – and it certainly did serve that purpose. But John who is writing these stories does not fail to miss a broader application of such details and I noticed that the last story in this chapter had a similar note about the time of day.

Near the beginning of the previous story John mentions that Jesus was sitting by the well of Jacob at about the sixth hour of the day, or high noon as we would think of it, when the woman came along that would soon change the whole atmosphere of the town from which she had just come. I am not sure how long that discussion went on but it certainly could not have taken very much time. So if that interchange with Jesus began around noon, or the sixth hour in their reckoning, then the period needed for the discussion to warm up and conclude and then adding the time needed for her to return to town would have taken at least another half hour or better I would think. Then there was at least a short period of time after she reached town for her to induce the amazement of many of the men in town with her startling message and then a short time for them to all return with her back out of town to the well.

What I am saying is that it could very likely have been close to the seventh hour when the men of that city encountered Jesus still waiting around at the well, possibly eating lunch with His disciples by now. According to the story they were so infected by this time with the excitement of the woman who had first talked with Him that they urged Jesus to come back to town with them. I think it would also be safe to say that by this time they were well on their way to experiencing saving belief in Jesus – and right about the seventh hour of the day.

What looks like exactly three days later to the very hour, Jesus again has an encounter with a man who is ready to come into a relationship of belief. And while this man is struggling apparently with a lot more unbelief to start with than the whole town full of people from Sychar, he too finally chooses to embrace real belief in Jesus at the seventh hour of the day – about the same time of day that many of the people of Sychar had begun to believe. By the next day in both cases many more had come to believe in Jesus because of the effect that Jesus had on their hearts.

The first story emphasized that their belief came from hearing His words for themselves; the second story seemed to produce faith based not only on Jesus' words but on the power that His words had through a miracle of healing. Of course, another lesson that might be seen here is that the woman and her fellow townspeople were slightly ahead of the Jews in their willingness to believe. The woman began to believe symbolically an hour before the royal official in the second story was ready to believe.

Either way, it seems quite clear to me that these two stories are intentionally linked with each other through various ways, some using sharp contrast and in other ways by strong similarities like this one. John is using every means possible to open our minds and hearts to understanding what saving belief looks like and even more importantly how to experience it for ourselves. That is exactly why I am spending so much time immersing my own mind and heart in these stories – because I want to enter much deeper into this experience of true faith, of belief that is grounded and rooted in the Word and the presence of Jesus.