Bible Synapse
Was the shadow on the sundial a sign of Hezekiah’s healing or of the city’s deliverance from Assyria?
Hard question · Israel’s history: Joshua to Esther · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
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God promises fifteen more years and deliverance from Assyria; Hezekiah asks for a sign “that the Lord will heal me”, and the shadow goes back ten degrees.
And I will add unto thy days fifteen years; and I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria; and I will defend this city for mine own sake, and for my servant David’s sake. And Isaiah said, Take a lump of figs. And they took and laid it on the boil, and he recovered. And Hezekiah said unto Isaiah, What shall be the sign that the Lord will heal me, and that I shall go up into the house of the Lord the third day? 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? And Hezekiah answered, It is a light thing for the shadow to go down ten degrees: nay, but let the shadow return backward ten degrees. 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.
The same promises; “this shall be a sign unto thee from the Lord, that the Lord will do this thing that he hath spoken”.
Go, and say to Hezekiah, Thus saith the Lord, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will add unto thy days fifteen years. And I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria: and I will defend this city. And this shall be a sign unto thee from the Lord, that the Lord will do this thing that he hath spoken; Behold, I will bring again the shadow of the degrees, which is gone down in the sun dial of Ahaz, ten degrees backward. So the sun returned ten degrees, by which degrees it was gone down.
At the chapter’s end: the lump of figs for the boil, and Hezekiah’s question, “What is the sign that I shall go up to the house of the Lord?”
For Isaiah had said, Let them take a lump of figs, and lay it for a plaister upon the boil, and he shall recover. Hezekiah also had said, What is the sign that I shall go up to the house of the Lord?
The objection
In 2 Kings 20 Hezekiah asks for a sign that God will heal him, and the shadow going back on the dial of Ahaz is that sign. In Isaiah 38 the sign comes straight after the promise to defend Jerusalem from the king of Assyria, as if that were what it confirmed. The two accounts seem to tie the same sign to different promises.
The answer
In Kings the message from God has three parts: Hezekiah will be healed and go up to the temple on the third day, fifteen years will be added to his life, and God will deliver him and the city from Assyria (2 Kings 20:5–6). Isaiah’s shorter account of the message gives the last two (Isaiah 38:5–6). The sign confirms the message as a whole. Kings says it is the sign “that the Lord will do the thing that he hath spoken” (20:9); Isaiah uses almost the same words, “that the Lord will do this thing that he hath spoken” (38:7). Neither limits the sign to one part of the promise.
Isaiah’s account is shorter, and it is arranged around Hezekiah’s psalm of thanks (38:9–20). The details of the cure come after the psalm: the lump of figs laid on the boil, and Hezekiah’s question, “What is the sign that I shall go up to the house of the Lord?” (38:21–22). That is the same question as in Kings: the sign that he would recover and go up to the temple. So Isaiah, too, connects the sign with the healing; he simply tells that part last.
The parts of the promise also hang together. A king who was to live fifteen more years needed a kingdom to live in, and the Assyrian threat was the danger of those very years. Gill reads the sign in this way, as assurance of all three: the recovery, the added years and the protection of Jerusalem.
Other answers Christians give
Verses out of place
Keil and Delitzsch thought that Isaiah 38:21–22 belong after verse 6, and were left out there by a copyist, added in the margin and later placed at the end. Others think the author put them there on purpose, as a closing note after the psalm. Either way, the verses show that in Isaiah the sign answers Hezekiah’s question about his recovery.
From the classic commentators
which was a token confirming and assuring that the Lord will do this thing that he hath spoken; recover Hezekiah from his sickness, so that on the third day he should go up to the temple; have fifteen years added to his days; and the city of Jerusalem protected from the attempts of the Assyrian monarch.John Gill, Exposition of the Bible, on Isaiah 38:7
Sources
- John Gill, Exposition of the Bible: Isaiah 38 (1746–1763), at Bible Hub
- Keil & Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament: Isaiah 38 (on the order of verses 21–22), at Bible Hub