In Psalm 119 the psalmist says he prays seven times a day. Did the Jews at the time of Christ have set times for prayer each day, and did the early Christians have similar times?
The short answer to your question is yes. Both Jews and Christians had set times for prayer, and the customary number was three. Although the exact practice varied somewhat, there was a well-established pattern of praying at particular hours, especially in connection with the daily sacrifices in the Temple.
Wherever they were, Jews would face Jerusalem at the time of the morning and evening sacrifices and unite themselves in prayer with the sacrifice being offered in the Temple.
To put this in context, the Jewish times for prayer were based on their way of counting the hours. There were four periods at night, known as watches. The first watch began at sunset, when the Jewish day began, and ran roughly from 6pm to 9pm.
he second was from 9pm to midnight, the third from midnight to 3am and the fourth from 3am to 6am. We see this terminology in the New Testament, for example, when “in the fourth watch of the night [Jesus] came to them, walking on the sea” (Mt 14:25).
The daytime was commonly divided into twelve hours. The first hour, hora prima in Latin, began at sunrise, roughly 6am. The third hour, hora tertia, was 9am; the sixth, sexta, was noon; the ninth, nona, was 3pm; and the twelfth hour, duodecima, was at sunset, around 6pm.
We see these hours in the parable of the workers in the vineyard. The householder called the first ones “early in the morning,” around 6am, the second ones at the third hour, others at the sixth and ninth hours, and the last ones at the eleventh hour, 5pm (cf. Mt 20:1-6).
St Mark refers to several of these hours in relating the crucifixion of Jesus. “And it was the third hour, when they crucified him. And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi lama sabachthani?’” (Mk 15:25, 33-34).
According to St John, when Pilate sentenced Jesus to death, “it was about the sixth hour” (Jn 19:14).
Returning to the hours of prayer, the Jews customarily had three regular times for prayer each day. The first, Shacharit, was in the morning, around the time of the morning sacrifice in the Temple, shortly after sunrise. The second, Mincha, was in the afternoon around 3pm, at the time of the evening sacrifice. The third, Ma’ariv or Arvit, was after sunset. This time became more firmly established after the destruction of the Temple in AD 70, but it had roots in earlier Jewish practice.
There are scriptural texts that refer to these times. For example, Psalm 55:17 says, “Evening and morning and at noon I utter my complaint and moan, and he will hear my voice.” The book of Daniel says that Daniel, having looked towards Jerusalem, “got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God” (Dan 6:10).
Psalm 119:164, which you mentioned in your question, speaks rather of seven times for prayer: “Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous ordinances.” Scripture scholars tend to interpret the seven times as referring to multiple moments of praise of God throughout the day, given that the number seven for the Jews referred to plenitude, or fullness.
The practice of praying three times a day carried over into the life of the first Christians, as related in the New Testament. Acts 3:1 says, “Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour.” And Acts 10:9 says, “Peter went up on the housetop to pray, about the sixth hour.”
The sixth hour, noon, although not one of the principal Temple prayer hours, was also customary among many Jews. In Acts 10:30 we read that Cornelius said, “I was keeping the ninth hour of prayer in my house.”
These prayer times carried over into the church’s Liturgy of the Hours, with the principal hours of Lauds early in the morning and Vespers at sunset, and three shorter hours during the day known as Terce, Sext and None, or Third, Sixth and Ninth.
