In Mesopotamia and Egypt water clocks
and gnomons were used from the second millennium B.C. and an Egyptian sundial
of the thirteenth century has been found in Gezer. In a legendary account of
king Hezekiah’s illness and miraculous cure there are mentioned m’lwt ‘ḥz
on which the sun receded ten degrees at the prayer of Isaiah.
And Hezekiah said: “It is easy for the
shadow to go forward ten degrees; rather let the shadow turn back ten degrees.”
So Isaiah the prophet cried to the Lord; and he brought back the shadow the ten
degrees which it had done down on the “sundial” of Ahaz.
The “degrees of Ahaz” was not a sundial,
properly speaking, but a stairway erected by Ahaz. As m’lh may signify
either one of the flight of steps or a degree, we might suppose the expression to
refer to an actual succession of steps, leading perhaps to the “high chamber”
mentioned in a gloss in 2 K. 23:12. There may have been an obelisk on a nearby
square throwing the shadow of its highest point at noon upon the highest steps,
and in the morning and evening upon the lowest, so that the obelisk itself
served as a gnomon. m’lh can, therefore, mean both step and degree, and
consequently m’lwt ‘ḥz can be translated either as “the staircase of
Ahaz” or “the sundial of Ahaz.” The miracle in question would imply a sudden movement
of a shadow on that stairway. (Luis I. J. Stadelmann, The Hebrew Conception
of the World [Analecta Biblica 39; Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1970], 69)
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