And Isaiah said, “This shall be the sign to you from the LORD, that the LORD will do the thing that he has promised: shall the shadow go forward ten steps, or go back ten steps?”
The historian, having shown us blaspheming Sennacherib destroyed in the midst of the prospects of life, here shows us praying Hezekiah delivered in the midst of the prospects of death - the days of the former shortened, of the latter prolonged. I. Here is Hezekiah's sickness. In those days, that is, in the same year in which the king of Assyria besieged Jerusalem; for he reigning reigned?
Commenting on 2 Kings 20:1-11
And Hezekiah answered, it is a light thing for the shadow to go down ten degrees,.... That is, it was comparatively so, otherwise to go down ten degrees at once would be extraordinary and miraculous; but that was more agreeable to the nature and course of it to go forward, and so the miracle would be less apparent: nay, but let the shadow return backward...
2Ki 20:9-10 הצּל הלך: “the shadow is gone ten degrees, if it should go back ten degrees?” The rendering, visne umbram solarii decem gradibus progredi an ... regredi, which Maurer still gives after the Vulgate, vis an ut ascendat ... an ut revertatur, cannot be grammatically reconciled with the perfect הלך, and is merely a conjecture founded upon the answer of Hezekiah.
Commenting on 2 Kings 20:9-10