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2Ki_20:9 And Isaiah said, This sign shalt thou have of the LORD, that the LORD will do the thing that he hath spoken: shall the shadow go forward ten degrees, or go back ten degrees?
Ver. 9. Shall the shadow go forward ten degrees?] This was in God Almighty stupenda dignatio, a wonderful condescension, thus to gratify a mortal man - stooping so low to his meanness. If Hezekiah were - as the Rabbis say he was - studious of the mathematics, how suitable was this sign! These degrees were half-hours, or quarters, or haply less. The shadow was that of the style of a sundial. Neither did the shadow only go backward, but the sun itself ran retrograde, {Isa_38:8} whereof the Rabbis give this foolish reason, that when wicked Ahaz was buried, the sun hastened faster than ordinary to his setting, that there might be no time for funeral rites, to recompense which loss of time then, the day was thus prolonged now. Those ancients do better, who, allegorising the text, tell us that sick Hezekiah signifieth all mankind as sick of sin; but this is an infallible sign of the saint’s recovery, that the sun hath gone ten degrees back in the dial. The Sun of righteousness Jesus Christ, hath for our sakes made himself lower by many degrees in the earth. "My Father is greater than I": there he is gone back ten degrees below his Father. "Thou hast made him lower than the angels": there he is gone back ten degrees below the angels. "I am a worm, and no man": there he has gone back ten degrees below men. "A live dog is better than a dead lion": there he has gone back ten degrees below worms: for he was not counted so good as a live worm, but was buried in the earth, as a dead lion, to be meat for the worms, if it had been possible for "his holy One to see corruption."