mechanically, they are morally connected, just as between Isaiah's promised sign and its bestowal,

the prayer of the prophet intervened (2 Kings 20:11). As miracle is not magic, so prayer is not

necessitarianism; and on looking back upon our lives we have to thank God as often for prayers

unanswered as for prayers answered.

Yet another lesson connected with the change in the message which Isaiah was to bring to

Hezekiah has been already noted by Jerome. There is widest bearing in this remark of his (on

Ezekiel 33), that it does not necessarily follow because a prophet predicts an event that what he

had predicted should happen. "For," as he adds, the prophet "did not predict in order that it might

happen, but lest it should happen." And the immutability of God's counsels is not that of fatalism,

but depends on the continuance of the circumstances which had determined them.

This may help us to understand another and in some respects more difficult question. Evidently

alike the announcement of Hezekiah's untimely death and its revocation were determined by his

relation towards God. This would in turn have its important bearing upon the conduct of the king

in the coming Assyrian war, which concerned not only Hezekiah personally, but the whole

Davidic line and the fate of Judah itself. But the lessons taught the king first by his danger and

then by his restoration were precisely those which Hezekiah needed to learn if, obedient to the

admonit ions of Isaiah, and believing the promise of the LORD, he was consistently to carry out

the will of Jehovah amidst the temptations and difficulties of the Assyrian invasion. This, not only

because he had had experience of the truth of prophetic promise, but because he had learned, as he

could not otherwise have been taught, that God answered prayer; that He was merciful and

forgiving, and able to turn aside the most threatening danger, even at the extreme moment. In

truth, what was afterwards witnessed in t he deliverance of Jerusalem was on a large scale the same

that Hezekiah himself had experienced in his healing. Thus the lessons of his recovery were

intended as spiritual preparation for what was so soon to follow.

It still remains to refer more particularly to "the sign" itself on the sun-clock of Ahaz. From the

circumstance that in the original account in the Book of Kings there is no mention of alteration in

the relative position of the sun (as in the poetic quotation in Joshua 10:12, 13), but of a possible

descent or ascent of the shadow,* and that even this was to be only observable on the step -clock of

Ahaz, we infer that, in the view of the writer, "the sign" was local, and hence could not have

implied an interference with the regular order of Nature.

* As already stated, the account of the event in the Book of Isaiah (38:8) is evidently not the

original one, but possibly abbreviated from that in the Book of Kings. Whether, in its present form

ver. 6 is really due to a later editor, or the reference in it to the sun, not the shadow, be only a

popular mode of description, is not of any practical importance for our present purpose.

The Scriptural narrative conveys only that in that particular place something had occurred which

made the shadow on the dial to retrograde, although at the same time we can have no hesitation in

saying that this something was Divinely caused.

What this "something" of a purely local character was, we have not the means of ascertaining. Of

the various suggestions most probability attaches to that of an extraordinary refraction of the sun-

rays, which has been recorded to have produced similar phenomena in other places.* If such

Divine intervention be called a miracle, we demur not to the idea nor to the designation - though

we prefer that of "a sign." But we add that, in a modified sense, Divine interpositions as signs to us

are not so unfrequent as some people imagine.

* Thus the Prior Romnald, in Metz, notes on the 27th March, 1703, a similar retrogression on the

sun-dial of about an hour and a half (= six steps on the clock of Ahaz), due to a refraction of the

sun's rays by a vapor cloud.