Yǐsaìyàshū 38:8

8 Jiù shì jiào Yàhāsī de rì guǐ , xiàng qián jìn de rì yǐng wǎng hòu tuì shí duó . yúshì qián jìn de rì yǐng , guǒrán zaì rì guǐ shang wǎng hòu tuì le shí duó .

Yǐsaìyàshū 38:8 Meaning and Commentary

Isaiah 38:8

Behold, I will bring again the shadow of the degrees
Or lines made on a dial plate, to show the progress of the sun, and what time of day it was. Some think only the shadow was brought back by the power of God, the sun keeping its course as usual; but in the next clause the sun is expressly said to return ten degrees: besides, it is not easy to conceive how the shadow of the sun should go back, unless the sun itself did; if it had been only the shadow of it on Ahaz's dial, it would not have fallen under the notice of other nations, or have been the subject of their inquiry, as it was of the Babylonians, ( 2 Chronicles 32:31 ) : which is gone down on the sundial of Ahaz,
the first sundial we read of; and though there might be others at this time, yet the lines or degrees might be more plain in this; and besides, this might be near the king's bedchamber, and to which he could look out at, and see the wonder himself, the shadow to return ten degrees backward; what those degrees, lines, or marks on the dial showed, is not certain. The Targum makes them to be hours, paraphrasing the words thus;

``behold, I will bring again the shadow of the stone of hours, by which the sun is gone down on the dial of Ahaz, backwards ten degrees; and the sun returned ten hours on the figure of the stone of hours, in which it went down;''

but others think they pointed out half hours; and others but quarters of hours; but, be it which it will, it matters not, the miracle was the same: so the sun returned ten degrees, by which degrees it was gone down;
and so this day was longer by these degrees than a common day, be they what they will, and according as we suppose the sun went back, suddenly, or as it usually moved, though in a retrograde way, and made the same progress again through these degrees. The Jews have a fable, that the day King Ahaz died was shortened ten hours, and now lengthened the same at this season, which brought time right again. According to Gussetius, these were not degrees or marks on a sundial, to know the time of day, for this was a later invention, ascribed to Anaximene's, a disciple of Anaximander ^F3, two hundred years after this; but were steps or stairs built by Ahaz, to go up from the ground to the roof of the house, on the outside of it, and which might consist of twenty steps or more; and on which the sun cast a shadow all hours of the day, "and this declined ten of these steps", which might be at the window of Hezekiah's bedchamber. ^F4

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FOOTNOTES:

F4 Plin. Nat. Hist. l. 2. c. 76.
F4 Vid. Comment. Ebr. p. 606.

Yǐsaìyàshū 38:8 In-Context

6 Bìngqiĕ wǒ yào jiù nǐ hé zhè chéng tuōlí Yàshù wáng de shǒu , yĕ yào bǎohù zhè chéng .

7 Wǒ Yēhéhuá bì chéngjiù wǒ suǒ shuō de , wǒ xiān gĕi nǐ yī ge zhào tóu .

8 Jiù shì jiào Yàhāsī de rì guǐ , xiàng qián jìn de rì yǐng wǎng hòu tuì shí duó . yúshì qián jìn de rì yǐng , guǒrán zaì rì guǐ shang wǎng hòu tuì le shí duó .

9 Yóudà wáng Xīxījiā huànbìng , yǐjing quányù , jiù zuò shī shuō ,

10 Wǒ shuō , zhèngzaì wǒ zhōng nián ( huò zuò shǎngwu ) zhī rì , bì jìnrù yīnjiān de mén . wǒ yú shèng de niánsuì bùdé xiǎngshòu .