THE DIAL OF KING AHAZ.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—May I make a suggestion with reference to the follow- ing words contained in a review paragraph in last week's Spectator on the " Temple Bible Dictionary " P—" It is cer- tainly clear that if it is literally true that Isaiah made the sun to retreat," &c. The prophet Isaiah is recorded (Isaiah xxxviii. 8 and 2 Kings xx. 11) as being permitted to give Hezekiah a sign from the Lord that he should recover, the sign being that " the shadow of the degrees on the dial of King Ahaz went backward ten degrees." What may have taken place is what I have myself actually seen occur with the shadow of the tall trunk of a young oak-tree thrown upon the side of a barn,—a shadow by which I had so often measured the approximate time that. I used to call the barn and the oak-tree " the dial of King Ahaz." On one day an unusually heavy stationary mass of storm-cloud obscured the sun itself, but the sunlight, blazing through a rift in the cloud
to one side of the sun, cast the shadow of the oak's trunk back to a point a quarter of the circle from where it had just been. If the " dial of Ahaz " was a pillar or obelisk, the shadow of which was thrown upon a circle of degrees marked on the ground or on a wall, the same thing could have occurred without any convulsion of the solar system.—I am, Sir, &c.,
TRAVELLER.
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