the Week of Christ the King / Proper 29 / Ordinary 34
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2 Kings 20:10
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Concordances:
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- CondensedContextual Overview
Bible Verse Review
from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge
2 Kings 2:10, 2 Kings 3:18, Isaiah 49:6, Mark 9:28, Mark 9:29, John 14:12
Reciprocal: Joshua 10:14 - there was
Gill's Notes on the Bible
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 ten degrees; which was directly contrary to its natural order and course, whereby the miracle would appear more clear and manifest: these degrees are by some said x to be half hours, and not full ones, since it is observed the sun shines not twenty full hours on any dial, unless under the pole; the sun is supposed to have been now at the fifth full hour; the sun was brought back five whole hours, then came forward five, then came forward two degrees, or one hour, to the sixth hour; which made sixteen; then it was six hours to sunset; so that day was prolonged twenty two hours: the Chinese y relate, that, in the time of Kingcungus, the planet Mars, for sake of the king, went back three degrees.
x Weemse's Christ. Synagog. l. 1. c. 6. sect. 6. p. 167. See his Exposition of the Judicial Laws, c. 25. p. 90. &c. y Martin. Sinic. Hist. l. 4. p. 138.
Barnes' Notes on the Bible
It is a light thing - It seemed to Hezekiah comparatively easy that the shadow, which had already begun to lengthen, should merely make a sudden jump in the same direction; but, wholly contrary to all experience that it should change its direction, advancing up the steps again when it had once begun to descend them.