When A Rooster Becomes A Man

A New Look At An Old Story

Luke 22:31-34

by: Preston McNutt

“And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren. And he said unto him, Lord, I am ready to go with thee, both into prison, and to death. And he said, I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me.”

All of us have a little bit of Peter in us. Brash to the point of being cocky when it comes to our faith in Jesus. Whose real name is Yeshua, by the way. “Let 'em come! I'll never deny the Lord! Take my life. Take my wife! Take my head! I'm with you Jesus, all the way. You and me, right?”  We might pray for dying grace should we ever have to face such a scenario. But what about our everyday encounters with the world? Your boss? Your unsaved friends? Are you so bold that a simple witness of your relationship with Him comes easily? Or do you clam up and just pray that predestination will rule the day; that maybe somehow, somewhere, someone will testify to them and voila! Instant salvation! And see how powerful my prayers are, amen and thank ya' Jesus!

This article isn't really about Peter's personality, although we will revisit him at the end of the story and see how that brashness powerfully served the Lord's purposes in his post-resurrection ministry. Rather, this story is about how a rooster can be a man. And how we, the Body of Messiah, with our western/Greek mindset, so horribly twist and misunderstand scripture by not seeing it through the Hebraic eyes of the writers of Brit Chadashah.

First, let me take you back several decades to a farm in southern New Mexico. A farm among many farms where cotton was grown. And enough alfalfa to feed half the cattle in the western United States, it seemed. And melons. Oh, the sweetest, juiciest melons a boy could ever hope to steal from a neighbor's patch! And don't forget the chile peppers. The finest chiles the world has ever known. You may call it chili, but the word is really chile, for those that want to question it.

This is where I spent the years of my youth. So I know very well the musical cadence of morning sounds in the country. I can recall like it was yesterday the throaty croak of bullfrogs in the distance.   The annoying tweets of sparrows nesting in the attic, which we boys were paid a penny each for eliminating with the new Red Ryder BB guns we had gotten the previous Christmas. It wasn't until years later that I learned that our God numbered every sparrow that fell victim to my aim. I think of the annoying cicadas that drove you crazy because they sounded like they were everywhere and nowhere and you couldn't find them to dispose of them, no matter how long you looked. I remember the flutter of butterflies as they drifted past the window on a cool summer evening. Well, you really couldn't hear the sound of butterflies in flight. Funny how fanciful the memory becomes with advancing age. Like the sound of the babbling brook twenty yards from the front of our adobe house, a “brook” that was really no more than a dirt irrigation ditch, which fed the dirt storage tank, which in turn fed the fields of aforesaid crops. I remember especially the dingblasted rooster crowing every morning, like clockwork, outside the bedroom window before the sun even rose. On weekdays, when school was in session, ok. But weekends? And summer mornings? I mean really? Which leads us to the subject of this story.

The Church has seen many a “movement” during my lifetime. The Holiness Movement and the Shepherding Movement and the Charismatic Movement and the Pentecostal Movement and I'm surely leaving out some of the movements but you get my drift. There is something different going on today. The Holy Spirit is moving, brooding if you will, across the face of Christianity in these last days, bringing with Him a hunger, a real longing in the Body of Messiah for “the Ancient Paths”, Jeremiah 16:6. I cringe when I hear people refer to the Holy Spirit as “it”. He is not an it. He is a Him. A Person. He is God. Even as the Father is God. And the Word was God. He is speaking to the hearts of more and more Christians, revealing the richness of our Hebraic heritage, causing a hunger to know, not about Jesus, but about Yeshua, our Jewish Messiah. In that vein, I want to share what Ruach Qodesh, Holy Spirit, showed me about this cockamamie rooster that Peter supposedly heard when he denied the Lord. It is my contention that if we are to truly understand and receive the fullness, the sweet savor, the raw power of the FRUIT of the New Testament, we MUST begin to see it from a Hebraic perspective, or the ROOT from which it sprang.

Many of the translators either by ignorance or in some cases with a clear intent to steer people away from anything Jewish, mistranslated the title passage to mean a rooster crowed. Not knowing the customs, idiomatic expressions etc., the translators assumed the word was cock, or rooster. But that presents a problem. According to the Mishnah, poultry was not allowed to even be kept within the walls of the city, lest they fly into the Temple and defile it.

The Greek words in the title text, alektor, translated cock,  means crier; which in some cases could mean rooster; and    phoneo, translated crow, means  to call out; to address in words or by name. I don't know about you, but growing up on the farm, I never heard a rooster address me by name, although I addressed them by many names. Most of which I've since repented of.

From jewishencyclopedia.com, we read “The Mishnah, B. Ḳ. vii. 7 (see also Ab. R. N., ed. Schechter, xxxv. 106), forbade the maintenance of poultry and sheep in the city; and probably Josephus' decree may be connected with this prohibition, which was considered an ancient ordinance.”

The proper translation is really quite evident when the practices of that time are understood. The ‘rooster’ or ‘cock’ that Peter and Yeshua heard was not a bird at all, but a man. That man was a priest at the Temple. He was the one who had the responsibility of unlocking the Temple doors each and every morning before dawn. Every night this priest would lock the doors to the Temple and place the key in an opening in the floor of one of the Temple side rooms. Then he would place a flat stone over the opening and place his sleeping mat over the stone. He would literally sleep over the key to the Temple. In the morning this priest would arise at first light and retrieve the key. He would then unlock the doors  to the Temple and cry out in a loud voice: "All the cohanim (priests) prepare to sacrifice”. Then "All the Leviim (Levites) to their stations”. Finally he would cry out "All the Israelites come to worship”. Then he would repeat these statements two more times.

The priest in question was known as the Temple Crier, and he was called ‘alektor’ in Greek, which can either be a ‘cock’ or ‘man’ (cock is Gever in Hebrew). ‘Alektor’ here was erroneously assumed to be the ‘cock’ or ‘rooster’ instead of the Priestly Temple Crier. It was his obligation to rouse all the Priests, Levites, and worshippers and call them to begin their preparations for the morning sacrifice service. In the stillness of the early morning,  it was the Temple Crier's cry that was heard in the courtyard where Y’shua was being questioned by the High Priest and His accusers, and not the cock/rooster. And this is what was heard when Yeshua cast His sorrowful glance upon Peter after he denied Him.

This is only one of many examples that illustrates how English reading Bible students are shortchanged in their understanding of some of the events in Brit Chadashah as they actually took place. Seeing them through “Hebrew eyes”, the stories take on a whole new dimension in our understanding of the life of Yeshua while He walked on this earth.

I promised I would touch on something positive about Peter's brash personality, so here it is. Remember Yeshua prayed “....I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.” Aren't you glad? He doesn't change our personality, He refocuses it and strengthens it and uses it to His purpose.

Look at Peter's bold declaration after the Resurrection, after he was filled with the Holy Spirit. He addressed those same priests and Jewish rulers that grilled his Savior in the courtyard within earshot of His Father's House, the Temple, while he promptly denied he even knew Him. Acts 4:1-12 “And as they spake unto the people, the priests, and the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees, came upon them, Being grieved that they taught the people, and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they laid hands on them, and put them in hold unto the next day: for it was now eventide. Howbeit many of them which heard the word believed; and the number of the men was about five thousand.  And it came to pass on the morrow, that their rulers, and elders, and scribes, And Annas the high priest, and Caiaphas, and John, and Alexander, and as many as were of the kindred of the high priest, were gathered together at Jerusalem. And when they had set them in the midst, they asked, By what power, or by what name, have ye done this? Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them, Ye rulers of the people, and elders of Israel, If we this day be examined of the good deed done to the impotent man, by what means he is made whole; Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole. This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.”

This was tantamount to you or me standing before the Supreme Court judges and declaring “I come in the authority of One greater than you. And you are weighed in the balance and found wanting. And this  One that has all Authority over you is named YESHUA. And YOU CRUCIFIED HIM!” Peter I'm sure thought often of that day he denied the Lord over the course of his powerful ministry. And probably smiled with a tear in his eye as he recalled the great love of his Savior to forgive him and empower him as a tool in the Father's hand in spite of his failures. He eventually paid the ultimate price for his bold testimony for Yeshua. Word has it Peter actually chose to be crucified upside down, because he didn't feel worthy to be hung like his Messiah Yeshua. That's the power of that “conversion” Yeshua prayed for him in the Temple Courtyard.

In closing, I ask you. Are you having trouble witnessing to people about your faith? Be filled with the Holy Spirit! He's yours for the asking. He wants it more than you do. Just ….

Ask!

Seek!

Knock!

'Til next time, I remain,

Your brother and fellow sojourner,

Preston