Some writers have thought to find a note of time in 2 Kings xix, 29 ; Isa. xxxvii, 30, '• Ye shall eat this year such as groweth of itself," etc., assuming that the pas- sage is only to be explained as implying the interven-
HEZEKIAH
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tion of a sabbath-year, or even of a sabbath-year fol- lowed by a year of jubilee. All that can be said is that the passage may be interpreted in that sense; and it does happen that according to that view of the order of sabbatic and jubiliean years which is the best attested, a sabbath-year would begin in the autumn of B.C. 713 ( Browne, Ordo Scedorum, sec. 272-280), i. e. on the per- haps precarious assumption that the cycle persisted with- out interruption. At most, however, this no more fixes the fourteenth of Hezekiah to the j-ear B.C. 713, than it does to 70(5, or G90, or any other year of the series. But, in fact, it is not necessary to assume any reference to a sabbath-year. Suppose the words to have been spoken in the autumn, then, the produce of the previous harvest (April, JMay) having been destroyed or carried off by the invaders, there remained only that which sprang naturally from the dropped or trodden-out seed (H'^SO), and as the enemy's presence in the land hindered the au- tumnal tillage, there coidd be no regular harvest in the following spring (only the i;3^l7^> avTojxaTci). Hence there is no need to infer with Thenius, ad loc. that the enemy must have been in the land at least eighteen months, or, with Ewald, that Isaiah, speaking in the au- tunni, anticipated that the invasion would last through the following year {^Die Propheten des A.B. i, 301, and similarly Knobel, ii. s. p. 278).
There seems to be no ground whatever for the vagne conjecture so confidently advanced (Jahn, Ileb?: Common. § xli), that the king's illness was the same plague which had destroyed the Assyrian armj% The word ''^n'J is not elsewhere applied to the plague, but to carbuncles and iutiammatory idcers (Exod. ix, 9; Job ii, 1, etc.). Hezekiah, whose kingdom was stOl in a dangerous state from the fear lest the Assyrians might return, who had at that time no heir (for jManasseli was not bom till long afterwards, 2 Kings xxi, 1), and who regarded death as the end of existence (Isa. xxxviii), -'turned his face to the wall and wept sore" at tlie threatened approach of dissolution. God liad compassion ou his anguish, and heard his prayer. Isaiah had hai-illy left the palace when he was ordered to promise the king immediate re- covery, and a fresh lease of life, ratifying the promise by a sign, and curing the boil by a plaster of figs, which were often used medicinally in similar cases (Gesenius, Thes. i, 311 ; Celsius, llierohot. ii, 377; Bartholinus, De Morbis Biblicis, x, 47). What was the exact nature of the disease we cannot say; according to Meade, it was fever terminating in abscess. On this remarkable pas- sage we must here be content to refer the reader to Carp- zov, A pp. Crit. p. 351 sq. ; Rawlinson, Herod, ii, 832 sq. ; the elaborate notes of Keil on 2 Kings xx ; Kosenmiiller and Gesenius on Isa. xxxviii, and especially Ewald, Ge- scMckte iii, 638.
The sign given to Hezekiah in the going back of the shadow on the " sun-dial of Ahaz" can only be inter- preted as a miracle. The explanation proposed by J. von Gumpach (.-1//. Test. Sfudien, p. 181 sq.) is as incom- patible Avith the terms of the narrative (Isa. xxxviii, 8, especially the fuller one, 2 Kings xx,8-ll) as it is in- sulting to the character of the prophet, who is repre- sented to have managed the seeming return of the shad- ow by the trick of secretly turning the movable dial from its proper position to its opposite ! Thenius {ii. s. p. 403 sq.) would natiu-alize the miracle so as to obtain from it a note of time. The phenomenon was due, he thinks, to a solar eclipse, very small, viz. the one of 26th September, B.C. 713. Here, also, the prophet is taxed with a deception, to be justified by his wish to inspire the despairing king with the confidence essential to his recovery. The prophet employed for this purpose his astronomical knowledge of the fact that the eclipse was about to take place, and of the further fact that " at the beginnuig of an eclipse the shadow (e, g. of a gnomon) goes back, and at its ending goes for^vard :" an effect, however, so minute that the difference amounts at most to sixty seconds of time ; but then the " degrees" would
mark extremely small portions of time, possiblj' even 1080 to the horn- (like the later Hebrew C/dakim), and the so-called " dial" was enormously large ! Not more successfully, Mr. Bosanquet {Trans. ofR. Aiiat. Hoc. xv, 277) has recoiu-se to the same expedient of an eclipse on Jan. 11, 689 B.C., which, in this writer's scheme, lies in the fourteenth of Hezekiah. " Whoever truly believes in the Old Testament, as JMr. Bosanquet evidently does, must also be prepared to believe in a miracle," is the just comment made by M. v. Niebuhr, Gesch. A ssurs und Babels, p. 49. Mr. GresweU's elaborate attempt to prove from ancient astronomical records that the day of this miracle was preternaturally lengthened out to thirty-six hoiu-s will scarcely convince any one but himself {Fasii Temjmris Catholici, etc., and Browne's "Eemarks" on the same, 1852,,p. 23 sq.). See Dial.