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27. πάλιν οὖν. Again therefore, because he had denied before and yet another denial had become necessary. S. John, like S. Luke, omits the oaths and curses (Mar 14:71; Mat 26:73). We may believe that S. Peter himself through S. Mark was the first to include this aggravation of his guilt in the current tradition.
ἀλέκτωρ ἐφ. A cock crew. In none of the Gospels is there the definite article which our translation inserts. This was the second crowing (Mar 14:72). A difficulty has been made here because the Talmud says that fowls, which scratch in dunghills, are unclean. But (1) the Talmud is inconsistent on this point with itself; (2) not all Jews would be so scrupulous as to keep no fowls in Jerusalem; (3) certainly the Romans would care nothing about such scruples.
Just as the Evangelist implies (Joh 18:11), without mentioning, the Agony in the garden, so he implies (Joh 21:15), without mentioning, the repentance of S. Peter. The question has been raised, why he narrates S. Peter’s fall, which had been thrice told already. There is no need to seek far-fetched explanations, as that “there might be contained in it some great principle or prophetic history, and perhaps both: some great principle to be developed in the future history of the Church, or of S. Peter’s Church.” Rather, it is part of S. John’s own experience which falls naturally into the scope and plan of his Gospel, setting forth on the one side the Divinity of Christ, on the other the glorification of His manhood through suffering. Christ’s foreknowledge of the fall of His chief Apostle (Joh 13:38) illustrated both: it was evidence of His Divinity (comp. Joh 2:24-25), and it intensified His suffering. S. John, therefore, gives both the prophecy and the fulfilment. It has been noticed that it is “S. Peter’s friend S. John, who seems to mention most what may lessen the fault of his brother apostle;” that servants and officers were about him; that in the second case he was pressed by more than one; and that on the last occasion a kinsman of Malchus was among his accusers, which may greatly have increased Peter’s terror. Moreover, this instance of human frailty in one so exalted (an instance which the life of the great Exemplar Himself could not afford), is given us with fourfold emphasis, that none may presume and none despair.
On the difficulties connected with the four accounts of S. Peter’s denials see Appendix B.