2 Kings 20:11

And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the Lord,.... Or prayed, as the Targum; and was very earnest in prayer, that what Hezekiah had desired might be granted: and he brought the shadow ten degrees

And Isaiah said, This sign shalt thou have of the LORD, that the LORD will do the thing that he hath spoken: shall the shadow go forward ten degrees, or go back ten degrees? No JFB commentary on these verses.

Isaiah cried unto the Lord; being moved by God’ s Spirit first to offer him this sign, and then to pray for it. Ten degrees backward. Quest. 1. What were these degrees? Answ. Lines in the dial; but whether each of these lines or degrees noted an hour, or half an hour, or a quarter of an hour, is uncertain, and not very considerable in this case. Quest. 2. What was it that went down? Answ. Either, first, The shadow alone went back without the sun; for God could so dispose of the light of the sun, by interposing clouds, or other things, so that the shadow should fall only upon those lines, and in that manner as God directed it. And whereas the sun is said to have gone down, that may be spoken according to appearance, as other passages of Scripture are understood; as when the moon is called one of the great lights, Genesis 1, though it be less than some of the stars; and when the sun is said to go down, , and to be turned into darkness, . Or, secondly, The sun itself went back, and the shadow with it. This may seem most probable, first, By comparing this with , where the sun itself stood still. Secondly, Because it is said the sun itself returned, ; for which he here mentions the shadow only, because the miracle was not so easily discovered in the sun as in the shadow of a dial. And though the sun may be elsewhere taken improperly, yet where the improper signification is unnecessary, the proper is and ought to be preferred before it. Thirdly, Because this miracle was noted by the Babylonians, who, having understood that it was done for Hezekiah’ s sake, sent to inquire into the truth and manner of it, . Object. If this had been done, the heathen historians and astronomers would have taken notice of it, which we do not find that they did. Answ. So it is most probable they did, although those books be not now extant; which is not strange; this being confessed and bewailed, that so very few of the first and ancient writers are now left; Herodotus himself, the first, and father of the ancient historians, being long after this time. And yet it is observed, that there are some intimations of these things left, though mixed with fables, as many true histories were; as what the poets fabled of Jupiter’ s making the night twice as long as it should have been, that he might enjoy Alcmena longer. Whether the sun or shadow went backward suddenly, or leisurely, and in the same time in which it had gone down, is a question of no great moment, the miracle being evident either way. In the dial of Ahaz; which Ahaz had made in the king’ s palace.

2 Kings 20:11 And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the LORD: and he brought the shadow ten degrees backward, by which it had gone down in the dial of Ahaz.Ver. 11. And he brought the shadow.] Together with the body of the sun. This was the prodigy that the Babylonish ambassadors had observed and came to inquire of. The sun - which was their god - had honoured Hezekiah; therefore they were sent to honour him too with a visit and a present. And should not we therefore honour the saints whom Christ hath so honoured? See on 2 Kings 20:9. Ten degrees backward.] Ten degrees, that is, five hours, as the most hold; so that that day was seventeen hours long, not twenty-two, as Junius will have it. In the dial of Ahaz.] A famous dial, haply mural, and visible to Hezekiah out of his bedchamber. Abulens.

(11) And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the Lord.—Thus the sign is evidently regarded by the historian as something directly involving the Divine agency, i.e., as a miracle. He brought . . . Ahaz.—Literally, and he (i.e., Jehovah) made the shadow return on the steps, which it had descended in the steps of Ahaz, backward ten steps. On the question of how it was done, a good many opinions have been expressed, e.g., by means of a mock sun, a cloud of vapour, an earthquake, a contrivance applied by Isaiah (!) to the sun-dial, &c. Ephrem Syrus, and other church fathers, believed that the sun receded in his celestial path; but it is not said that the sun went back, but the shadow. (Isaiah 38:8 says “the sun returned,” by a perfectly natural usus loquendi.) Keil assumes “a wondrous refraction of the sun’s rays effected by God at the prayer of Isaiah.” Professor Birks and Mr. Cheyne agree with this, assuming, further, that the refraction was local only. (See 2 Chronicles 32:31.) Thenius, after arguing at length in favour of an eclipse (that of September 26th. 713 B.C. , which, however, will not harmonise with the Assyrian chronology), says: “Notwithstanding all this, I do not insist upon the suggested explanation, but I attach myself, with Knobel and Hitzig, to the mythical conception of the narrative.” “That the sign was granted, and that it was due to the direct agency of Him who ordereth all things according to His Divine will, is certain. How it was effected the narrative does not in any way disclose” (the Editor). Ewald and others wish to see in the retrogression of the shadow a token that “Hezekiah’s life-limit was to go back many years;” but the prophet gave the king is choice whether the shadow should go forward or backward.

Verse 11. He brought the shadow ten degrees backward] We cannot suppose that these ten degrees meant ten hours; there were ten divisions of time on this dial: and perhaps it would not be right to suppose that the sun went ten degrees back in the heavens, or that the earth turned back upon its axis from east to west, in a contrary direction to its natural course. But the miracle might be effected by means of refraction, for a ray of light we know can be varied or refracted from a right line by passing through a dense medium; and we know also, by means of the refracting power of the atmosphere, the sun, when near rising and setting, seems to be higher above the horizon than he really is, and, by horizontal refraction, we find that the sun appears above the horizon when he is actually below it, and literally out of sight: therefore, by using dense clouds or vapours, the rays of light in that place might be refracted from their direct course ten, or any other number of degrees; so that the miracle might have been wrought by occasioning this extraordinary refraction, rather than by disturbing the course of the earth, or any other of the celestial bodies. The dial of Ahaz.] 2Kg 9:13, and the observations and diagram at the end of this chapter. 2Kg 20:20.

11. And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the Lord] This verse and the two preceding are much compressed in the narrative of Isaiah, and nothing is said of Isaiah’s supplication, nor of the alternatives offered to the king. The whole is put into the form of a direct message from God, ‘Behold I will bring again’ &c. he brought the shadow ten degrees [R.V. steps] backward] The statement in Isaiah is not made concerning the shadow, but the sun. ‘So the sun returned ten degrees’ (R.V. steps). in [R.V. on] the dial of Ahaz] As will be seen from the margin of R.V., the word here rendered ‘dial’ is the same which in the previous verses the Revisers have translated ‘steps’. Also wherever the word is used elsewhere, and it is not of rare occurrence, it always refers to steps or stairs. It seems therefore best to consider that the contrivance by which the time of day was marked in this case was something which could be called a ‘staircase’ or ‘steps’. We must think too of the sign as given to Hezekiah while he lay upon what had been till a short space before, the bed of sickness and expected death. We must therefore conclude that the contrivance, whatever it was, must have been one which the king could see from his chamber. Probably it would be in the court of the palace, and there it might take the form of a staircase-like erection, with a gnomon or projecting shaft, so contrived that the shadow thrown by it should fall along the steps and grow shorter or longer as the sun rose or fell in the heavens. Or it might be a staircase proper, erected on one side of the court, and a staff or pole might be so fixed as to cast a shadow which by the motion of the sun would descend or rise on the steps. If such a staircase existed on the opposite side of the court to the king’s chamber (and such external staircases were very common) the means by which the sign should be given were ready to hand. Several kinds of sundials have been suggested which would fulfil the conditions, and Ahaz from his connexion with the Assyrians may have become acquainted with them, for they were first invented by the Babylonians. But to none of these instruments could we easily apply the word ‘steps’ so as to call the contrivance, as the Hebrew does, ‘the steps of Ahaz’. With regard to the length of time which is indicated by the word ‘step’ we have nothing to guide us. There is no necessity therefore to understand an alteration in the shadow equivalent to ten hours of our day. If it were half or a quarter of that time, it would be a very appreciable change on the dial. Of the speculations how the miracle was brought to pass none can be expected to be satisfactory.

11. The prophet cried… Lord — So this sign was granted in answer to a prophet’s prayer.