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experience of the truth of prophetic promise, but because he had learned, as he could not
otherwise have been taught, that God answered prayer; that He was merciful and
forgiving, and able to turn aside the most threatening danger, even at the extreme
moment. In truth, what was afterwards witnessed in the deliverance of Jerusalem was on
a large scale the same that Hezekiah himself had experienced in his healing. Thus the
lessons of his recovery were intended as spiritual preparation for what was so soon to
follow.
It still remains to refer more particularly to "the sign" itself on the sun-clock of Ahaz.
From the circumstance that in the original account in the Book of Kings there is no
mention of alteration in the relative position of the sun (as in the poetic quotation in
Joshua 10:12, 13), but of a possible descent or ascent of the shadow,* and that even this
was to be only observable on the step-clock of Ahaz, we infer that, in the view of the
writer, "the sign" was local, and hence could not have implied an interference with the
regular order of Nature.
- As already stated, the account of the event in the Book of Isaiah (38:8) is evidently not
the original one, but possibly abbreviated from that in the Book of Kings. Whether, in its
present form ver. 6 is really due to a later editor, or the reference in it to the sun, not the
shadow, be only a popular mode of description, is not of any practical importance for our
present purpose.
The Scriptural narrative conveys only that in that particular place something had occurred
which made the shadow on the dial to retrograde, although at the same time we can have
no hesitation in saying that this something was Divinely caused.
What this "something" of a purely local character was, we have not the means of
ascertaining. Of the various suggestions most probability attaches to that of an
extraordinary refraction of the sun-rays, which has been recorded to have produced
similar phenomena in other places.* If such Divine intervention be called a miracle, we
demur not to the idea nor to the designation - though we prefer that of "a sign." But we
add that, in a modified sense, Divine interpositions as signs to us are not so unfrequent as
some people imagine.
- Thus the Prior Romnald, in Metz, notes on the 27th March, 1703, a similar
retrogression on the sun-dial of about an hour and a half (= six steps on the clock of
Ahaz), due to a refraction of the sun's rays by a vapor cloud.
The fame of Hezekiah's healing spread far and wide, with a rapidity not uncommon in the
East. It reached a monarch who, especially at that time, was sorely in need of help,
Divine or human. Few chapters in history suggest more interesting episodes than that of
Merodach-baladan,* who contended for the independence and supremacy and for the
crown of Babylonia successively with Tiglath-pileser, Sargon, and Sennacherib - and
(^)