Hezekiah Healed and the Sundial #39

Hezekiah’s illness and recovery is a story of prayer and a sign in the sky. The king of Judah falls mortally ill, the prophet Isaiah tells him to prepare to die, and Hezekiah turns to God in tears. He is healed and given fifteen more years of life, and as a confirming sign the shadow on the stairway of Ahaz, often called a sundial, moves backward ten steps. The account appears in 2 Kings 20 and Isaiah 38.

The Account

Hezekiah becomes terminally ill, and Isaiah comes to him with a message from the Lord: “the LORD, Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live.” (2 Kings 20:1). Hezekiah turns his face to the wall, prays, and weeps bitterly, appealing to his faithful walk before God (2 Kings 20:2-3). Before Isaiah has left the middle court, the word of the Lord comes again: God has heard his prayer and seen his tears, and will heal him and add fifteen years to his life. God also promises to deliver him and the city from the king of Assyria (2 Kings 20:4-6).

Isaiah directs that a cake of figs be applied to the boil, and Hezekiah recovers (2 Kings 20:7). When Hezekiah asks for a sign that he will go up to the temple on the third day, Isaiah offers him a choice: will the shadow go forward ten steps or back ten steps? Hezekiah says it is easy for the shadow to lengthen, so he asks that it go back. Isaiah prays, and the shadow returns ten steps on the stairway of Ahaz (2 Kings 20:8-11).

Isaiah 38 gives the same events and adds a psalm of thanksgiving that Hezekiah wrote after his recovery (Isaiah 38:9-20).

Setting and Context

Hezekiah reigned in Jerusalem in the late eighth century BC during the rise of the Assyrian empire. His illness is placed around the time of Sennacherib’s invasion, and the promise to deliver the city ties the two stories together (2 Kings 18-19). The device called the “steps of Ahaz” (Hebrew ma’alot) is often translated as sundial, though the Hebrew word means steps or stairway, and the way it measured time is not described. The event is followed by the visit of envoys from Babylon, where Hezekiah shows them his treasures and Isaiah warns of a future exile (2 Kings 20:12-19).

The Chronicler summarizes the episode briefly and notes that Hezekiah’s heart became proud afterward, so that wrath came on him and Jerusalem until he humbled himself (2 Chronicles 32:24-26).

What It Reveals

The story shows that prayer can change what appears to be a settled outcome, and that God responds to a person’s tears. The sign given to Hezekiah is unusual, since the movement of a shadow is reversed rather than sped up. Many readers connect it with another celestial marvel, the day the sun stood still at Gibeon in Joshua 10.

Interpretations differ on the way the sign is understood. Some read it as a literal reversal in the sun’s apparent motion, and others suggest a local effect on the shadow that does not require a change in the sun’s course. The biblical writers emphasize what the sign confirms rather than how it occurred: the promise of healing and of deliverance from Assyria.