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Bible Dictionaries
Dial
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
or ma'alot , "degrees" or "steps" (Isaiah 38:8). The sun dial arid the division of the day into 12 hours were Babylonian inventions. As Ahaz copied the altar at Damascus (2 Kings 16:7; 2 Kings 16:10) so he probably copied the sun dial 700 B.C. But the division into 12 hours is not implied in the Old Testament day. (See DAY.) The "degrees" were "steps" ascending to his palace (Josephus). The shadow of a column or obelisk fell on a greater or less number of steps according as the sun was high or low.
The dial was of such a size and so placed that Hezekiah, when convalescent, could witness the miracle from his chamber; probably "in the middle court," the point where Isaiah turned back to announce to Hezekiah God's answer to his prayer (2 Kings 20:4; 2 Kings 20:9; Isaiah 38:21-22). Ahaz' intimacy with Tiglath Pileser would naturally lead the "princes of Babylon to inquire of the wonder done in the land," which shows that the miracle of the recession of the shadow on the dial was local, perhaps produced by divinely ordered refraction, a cloud denser than the air being interposed between the gnomon and the "degrees" or "dial."
These files are public domain.
Fausset, Andrew R. Entry for 'Dial'. Fausset's Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/fbd/d/dial.html. 1949.
