John 4:52

So he inquired of them the hour when he began to amend. They said therefore unto him, Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.

The nobleman would have been using the official time, that of the Romans, because Herod was a subject of the emperor. It appears in this verse that the same kind of time-reckoning was employed in the nobleman's home that John applied to the narrative of the sign; and this accounts for John's using one method in this case and another at Sychar, where the official connection with Rome was not indicated.

The word of the servants was not of an improvement in the son's condition, but a word of his healing. The fever did not merely abate; it left him! The miracles of Jesus were always wrought with dramatic and final authority. There was no piecemeal healing with him. He spake the word, and it was done. How utterly unlike Jesus' miracles are the pretended miracles of our own times.