Sun-Dial

The sun-dial enters scripture as a flight of measured steps in the royal complex at Jerusalem — the "steps of Ahaz" — where the descending shadow registers the time of day. It is named only in connection with the sign Yahweh gives to Hezekiah: a reversal of the shadow's normal motion, granted as confirmation that the king will recover from his illness.

The Steps of Ahaz

In the UPDV the apparatus is described in terms of its physical form. The narrative in 2 Kings traces the shadow back along the same flight of steps it had already descended: "And Isaiah the prophet cried to Yahweh; and he brought back the shadow on the steps it had gone down, on the steps of Ahaz, backward ten steps" (2Ki 20:11). Isaiah's account fixes the location of the structure as part of the upper royal building and pairs the shadow's motion with the sun's: "Look, I will move back the shadow of the steps, which has gone down on the steps from the Upper House of Ahaz - [I will move back] the sun backward ten steps. So the sun returned ten steps on the steps on which it had gone down" (Isa 38:8).

A Later Witness

The same event surfaces again in the praise of Hezekiah within Sirach, compressed into a single line that reaches back to the same prodigy: "In his days the sun went backward, And he added life to the king" (Sir 48:23). The two prose accounts and this poetic notice converge on one episode — the only occasion on which the steps of Ahaz are mentioned at all — and it is from that episode that the device acquires its name in the topical tradition.