Matthew 26:33

34. Verily I say unto thee Our Lord is forced by Peter’s boasts, nay, gain-sayings, to bring out the clear, precise, sorrowful truth.

Before the cock crow Mark and Luke say, “before the cock crow twice.” This Matthew omits, because it was the second cock-crowing that was usually and technically called “the cock-crowing.” Our Lord doubtless referred to the usual morning cock-crowing, since the midnight one is seldom heard, or in conversation taken into account. No difficulty can arise from the fact that the Jews kept no gallinaceous or barn fowls. The Romans may have done so, and the crow of the cock may have been heard from the Pretorium.

“In the crowing of a cock,” says Buckhardt, “there are two remarkable things: One, that an animal so small should cry with so loud a voice; the other, that it sings at stated hours, and at such times as other birds are silent in sleep.” He is created nature’s living time-keeper, He is God’s appointed watchman and crier in the midnight and at daylight, knowing and telling the hours by a wonderful instinct. That he is so inspired by a divine faculty, the Arabians expressed by their fancy that there was a white cock before the throne of God, whose voice gives the signal for all cocks on earth to crow. It was such a crier at whose voice the conscience of Peter was to be made to awake. But there was no power in the voice of the bird to express a divine meaning, had it not been interpreted beforehand by our Lord. So the voice of nature speaks with a divine wisdom, when we take God’s word to interpret its language.