<p>14:30 <i>And Jesus said to him: Truly I say to you, yes to you today, that this night- </i>Much of the Lord's knowledge and foreknowledge of events ahead of time can be explained in terms of His incredible sensitivity to others, His understanding of human psychology and behaviour patterns. But there are times when it seems He was given direct foreknowledge from the Father. And this seems one of them- to predict the exact number of denials that would be made that night, and to predict they would happen before the cock crew. This leads to the possibility that whenever He prefaces His words with &quot;Truly I say unto you...&quot;, He is stating something received by direct revelation. Another example is when He uses this rubric to introduce His prediction of how Peter would die (Jn. 21:18). This would be His equivalent of how the Old Testament prophets introduced their directly inspired words with the rubric &quot;Thus says the Lord&quot;. &quot;Truly&quot; (AV &quot;verily&quot;) is literally 'amen', as if the Lord Jesus is saying that He is aware of the words of His Father and in uttering them from His lips, is giving His personal agreement, stamp or 'Amen' to them.</p><p><i>Before the cock crows twice- </i>There is no article in the Greek. 'Before cock crow' is the idea, before the earliest sign of morning when the first cock crew, that very night, before that night even began to come to a close. Crowing &quot;twice&quot; may mean that the cock would not need to crow twice, before Peter thrice denied Him.</p><p><i>You shall deny me three times</i>- There is more detail about the denials in Mark because Mark appears to be writing for Peter; Peter's presentation of the Gospel emphasized his own failures. The Roman persecution of Christians required the converts to three times deny the Lord Jesus. Perhaps such emphasis is given to Peter's triple denials in order to encourage those who failed that test that their relationship with the Lord was not finished; and in fact they were in good company.</p><p>It's been pointed out that chickens couldn't have been anywhere near the High Priest's house because the priests forbad anyone in Jerusalem from keeping chickens, lest they stray into the temple. The <i>Encyclopaedia Judaica</i> points out that the priest who was the temple crier was called the <i>Gaver</i>, Hebrew for 'cock' or 'rooster'. This man opened the temple before dawn and called the priests and people to make the morning sacrifice. And he did this two or three times. Surely the Lord was referring to this when He spoke of the 'cock' crowing. Each time, Peter was being called to make the sacrifice with Jesus; but instead he denied knowledge of Jesus and the call to the cross which that knowledge entails. The context of the Lord's warnings to Peter about his forthcoming denial was that Peter had insisted he <i>would</i> die with Jesus, sharing in His sacrifice. And the Lord was foretelling that when that call came, Peter would deny the knowledge of Jesus.</p>