GOD TURNS BACK THE SUN

Promise Keeper

Hezekiah was king of Judah and fell ill. The prophet Isaiah was sent to his bedside to tell him to set his affairs in order because he was not going to recover. Hezekiah wept and prayed to the Lord and reminded him how he had served Him in sincerity and truth. Since he became king, Hezekiah had spent his time tearing down the high places, groves, altars and idols to the false gods in the land. He had indeed served God.

God heard his prayer and through Isaiah told him that he would -

1. heal him

2. he would appear in the temple on the third day

3. He would add 15 years to his life, and 

4. He would deliver Jerusalem out of the hand of the king of Assyria.

Talk about answered prayer! But look how bold Hezekiah was in response -

 Isaiah 38:7, And Hezekiah said to Isaiah, What is the sign that the Lord will heal me, and that I shall go up to the house of the Lord the third day? Then Isaiah said, This is the sign to you from the Lord, that the Lord will do the thing which He has spoken: shall the shadow go forward ten degrees or go backward ten degrees? And Hezekiah answered, It is an easy thing for the shadow to go down ten degrees, no but let the shadow go backward ten degrees. So Isaiah the prophet cried out to the Lord, and He brought the shadow ten degrees backward, by which it had gone down on the sundial of Ahaz (2 Kings 20:8-11).

Hezekiah was offered a choice: the shadow on the sundial could go either 10 degrees backwards or forwards. Hezekiah assumed that the sun going backward would be a greater sign since it would go against nature. God granted Isaiah 's prayer and the sign occurred. 

And this is the sign to you from the Lord, that the Lord will do this thing which He has spoken: Behold, I will bring the shadow on the sundial, which has gone down with the sun on the sundial of Ahaz, ten degrees backward. So the sun returned ten degrees on the dial by which it had gone down (Isaiah 38:7,8).

So God moved the position of the sun such that time turned backwards by 40 minutes. Imagine you're lying on your bed as Hezekiah was and the sun has gone down. Suddenly, the sun appears above the horizon again after it has already set! Now that's a sign!

It doesn't tell us specifically that the sun had already gone down, though it could have, the movement of the shadow backwards on the sundial would have been just as dramatic.

Could it happen again?

Isaiah gives an account of this same event but adds the word, "again" to the sentence.

(Isa 38:6-8) And I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria: and I will defend this city. (7) And this shall be a sign unto thee from the LORD, that the LORD will do this thing that he hath spoken; (8) 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.

Since Isaiah is a prophetic book, is it possible that when Assyria besieges Jerusalem again, that God will restore the sun to its original position as one of many heavenly signs. I would like to believe anything is possible with our God.

This is more than just an example of God's mercy. It also symbolizes that God controls time—he is both inside of history and above it, controlling it. He doesn't just determine the big historical events, like Sennacherib's invasion or the exile in Babylon, but the details of specific human lives, as in this case.

God doesn't just know what every person ate for breakfast, and even what every bird or animal ate for breakfast (if they're breakfast-eating animals)—he's planned all of those things out in advance. It's a bigger and more comprehensive idea of what a deity is capable of doing than any of the surrounding Near Eastern religions seem to have possessed. It's one of the big take-away messages of the story of how God saves Hezekiah and also the greater story of how God saves Judah from Sennacherib's invasion... Our God is truly Gracious and Kind.