Isaiah predicts the

A. M. 3291.
B. C. 713.

Ol. XVI. 4. An. Hippome

Babylonish captwity.

decen. 10. A. M. 3292.

B. C. 712.

W

A. M. 3292.
B. C. 712.
OL. XVIL 1.

An. Leocratis, Arch. Athen, decen. 1.

Ol. XVII. 4. An. Leocratis, Arch. Athen. decen. 1.

r

them.

16 And Isaiah said unto Hezekiah, Hear the word of the LORD.

17 Behold, the days come, that all that is in thine house, and that which thy fathers have laid up in store unto this day, shall be carried into Babylon: nothing shall be left, saith the LORD.

18 And of thy sons that shall issue from thee, which thou shalt beget, shall they take away; 2 and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.

19 Then said Hezekiah unto Isaiah, Good is the word of the LORD which thou hast spoken. And he said, Is it not good, if peace

b

and truth be in my days?

2

that the sun went ten degrees back in the heavens, or that the earth turned back upon its axis from east to west, in a contrary direction to its natural course. But the miracle might be effected by means of refraction, for a ray of light we know can be varied or refracted from a right line by passing through a dense medium; and we know also, by means of the refracting power of the atmosphere, the sun, when near rising and setting, seems to be higher above the horizon than he really is; and, by horizontal refraction, we find that the sun appears above the horizon when he is actually below it, and literally out of sight; therefore, by using dense clouds or vapours, the rays of light in that place might be refracted from their direct course ten, or any other number of degrees; so that the miracle might have been wrought by occasioning this extraordinary refraction, rather than by disturbing the course of the earth, or any other of the celestial bodies.

The dial of Ahaz.] See the note on chap. ix. 13, and the observations and diagram at the end of this chapter.

Verse 12. At that time Berodach-baladan] He is called Merodach-Baladan, Isa. xxxix. 1, and by the Septuagint, Syriac, and Arabic versions; and by several of Kennicott's and De Rossi's MSS.; and also by the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds. The true reading seems to be Merodach; the mem and beth might be easily interchanged, and so produce the mistake.

Sent letters and a present] It appears that there was friendship between the king of Babylon and Hezekiah, when the latter and the Assyrians were engaged!

in a destructive war. The king of Babylon had not only heard of his sickness, but he had heard of the miracle; as we learn from 2 Chron. xxxii. 31.

Verse 13. Hezekiah hearkened unto them] ·Instead of you" vaiyishma, he hearkened, Пo vaiyismach, he rejoiced or was glad, is the reading of twelve of Kennicott's and De Rossi's MSS., the parallel place, Isa. xxxix. 2, the Septuagint, Syriac, Vulgate, Arabic, some copies of the Targum, and the Babylonian Talmud.

All the house of his precious things] Interpreters are not well agreed about the meaning of the original

nechothoh, which we here translate precious things, and in the margin spicery or jewels. I suppose the last to be meant.

There was nothing in his house] He showed them, through a spirit of folly and exultation, all his treasures, and no doubt those in the house of the Lord. And it is said, 2 Chron. xxxii. 31, that in this business God left him to try him, that he might know all that was in his heart; and this trial proved that in his heart there was little else than pride and folly.

Verse 17. Behold, the days come] This was fulfilled in the days of the latter Jewish kings, when the Babylonians had led the people away into captivity, and stripped the land, the temple, &c., of all their riches. See Dan. i. 1-3.

Verse 18. They shall be eunuchs] Perhaps this means no more than that they should become household servants to the kings of Babylon. See the fulfilment, chap. xxiv. 13-15, and Dan. i. 1–3,

Verse 19. Good is the word of the Lord] He has

Hezekiah dies, and

A. M. 3278-3306,
B. C. 726-698.

OI. XIII. 3.
-XX. 3.

dah?

f

is succeeded by Manasseh

e

2 Chron. xxxii. 32. d Neh. iii. 16.

spoken right, I have done foolishly. I submit to his judgments.

Is it not good if peace and truth be in my days?] I believe Hezekiah inquires whether there shall be peace and truth in his days. And the question seems to be rather of an interested nature. He does not appear to deplore the calamities that were coming on the land, provided peace and truth might prevail in his days.

Verse 20. The rest of the acts of Hezekiah] See the parallel places in Isaiah and in 2 Chronicles. In this latter book, chap. xxxii., we find several particulars that are not inserted here; especially concerning his pride, the increase of his riches, his storehouses of corn, wine, and oil; his stalls for all manner of beasts; his cities, flocks, and herds, in abundance; and the bringing the upper water course of Gihon to the west side of the city of David, by which he brought a plentiful supply of water into that city, &c., &c., &e.

On the subject of the Babylonian embassy I may say a few words. However we may endeavour to excuse Hezekiah, it is certain that he made an exhibition of his riches and power in a spirit of great vanity; and that this did displease the Lord, It was also ruinous to Judea when those foreigners had seen such a profusion of wealth, such princely establishments, and such a fruitful land, it was natural for them to conceive the wish that they had such treasures, and from that to covet the very treasures they saw. They made their report to their king and 'countrymen, and the desire to possess the Jewish wealth became general; and in consequence of this there is little doubt that the conquest of Jerusalem was projected. History is not barren in such instances: the same kind of cause has produced similar effects. Take two or three notable instances.

When the barbarous Goth and Vandal nations saw the pleasant and fruitful plains and hills of Italy, and the vast treasures of the Roman people, the abundance of the necessaries, conveniences, comforts, and luxuries of life, which met their eyes in every direction; they were never at rest till their swords, put them in possession of the whole, and brought the mistress of the world to irretrievable ruin.

Vortigern, a British king, unhappily invited the Saxons, in 445, to assist him against his rebellious subjects: they came, saw the land that it was good, and in the end took possession of it, having driven out, or into the mountains of Wales, all the original Britons. The Danes, in the ninth century, made some inroads into England, found the land better than their own, and never rested till they established themselves in this country, and, after having ruled it for a considerable time, were at last, with the utmost difficulty, driven out..

21 And his fathers son reigned in his stead.

Hezekiah slept with and Manasseh his

A. M. 3306. B. C. 698. Ol. XX. 3. An. Apsandri, Arch. Athen. decen. 5.

e 2 Chron. xxxii. 30.- f2 Chron. xxxii. 33. These nations had only to see a better land in order to covet it, and their exertions were not wanting in order to possess it.

How far other nations, since those times, have imitated the most foolish and impolitic conduct of the Jewish king, and how far their conduct may have been or may yet be marked with the same consequences, the pages of impartial history have shown and will show : God's ways are all equal, and the judge of all the earth will do right. But we need not wonder, after this, that the Jews fell into the hands of the Babylonians, for this was the political consequence of their own conduct nor could it be otherwise, the circumstances of both nations considered, unless God, by a miraculous interposition, had saved them; and this it was inconsistent with his justice to do, because they had, in their pride and vanity, offended against him. To be lifted-up with pride and vain glory in the possession of any, blessings, is the most direct way to lose them; as it induces God, who dispensed them for our benefit, to resume them, because that which was designed for our good, through our own perversity becomes our bane.

1. I have intimated, in the note on ver. 11, that the shadow was brought back on the dial of Ahaz by means of refraction. On this subject some farther observations may not be improper.

2. Any person may easily convince himself of the effect of refraction by this simple experiment: Place a vessel on the floor, and put a piece of coin on the bottom, close to that part of the vessel which is farthest off from yourself; then move back till you find that the edge of the vessel next to yourself fairly covers the coin, and that it is now entirely out of sight. Stand exactly in that position, and let a person pour water gently into the vessel, and you will soon find the coin to reappear, and to be entirely in sight when the vessel is full, though neither it nor you have changed your positions in the least.

By the refracting power of the atmosphere we have several minutes more of the solar light each day than we should otherwise have. "The atmosphere refracts the sun's rays so as to bring him in sight every clear day, before he rises in the horizon, and to keep him in view for some minutes after he is really set below it. For at some times of the year we sce the sun ten minutes longer above the horizon than he would be if there were no refractions, and above six minutes every day at a mean rate:"-Ferguson.

And it is entirely owing to refraction that we have any morning or evening twilight; without this power in the atmosphere, the heavens would be as black as ebony in the absence of the sun; and at his rising we should pass in a moment from the deepest darkness into the brightest light; and at his setting, from the most intense light to the most profound darkness, which in

Observations on the refractive

power of the atmosphere.

Anaximenes, the Milesian, who flourished about four hundred years before Christ, is said by Pliny to have been the first who made a sundial, the use of which he taught to the Spartans; but others give this honour to Thales, his countryman, who flourished two hundred years before him.

3. Now this might be all purely natural, though it was extraordinary, and it proves the possibility of what I have conjectured, even on natural principles; but the foretelling of this, and leaving the going back or forward to the choice of the king, and the thing occurring in the place and time when and where it was predicted, shows that it was supernatural and miraculous, though the means were purely natural. Yet in that climate, (LAT. thirty-one degrees fifty minutes north, and LONG. thirty-five degrees twenty-five minutes east,) where vapours to produce an extraordinary refraction of the solar rays could not be expected, the collecting or producing them heightens and ascertains the miracle. "But why contend that the thing was done by refraction? Could not God as easily-have caused the sun, or rather the earth, to turn back, as to have produced this extraordinary and miraculous refraction?" I answer, Yes. But it is much more consistent with the wisdom and perfections of God to perform a work or accomplish an end by simple means, than by those that are complex; and had it been done in the other way, it would have required a miracle to invert and a miracle to restore; and a strong convulsion on the earth's surface to bring it ten degrees suddenly back, and to take it the same suddenly forward. The miracle, according to my supposition, was performed on the atmosphere, and without in the least disturbing even that; whereas, on the other supposition, it could not have been done without suspending or interrupting the laws of the solar system, and this without gaining a hair's breadth in credulity or conviction more by such stupendous interpositions than might be effected by the agency of clouds and vapours. The point to be gained was the bringing back the shadow on the dial ten degrees: this might have been gained by the means I have here described, as well as by the other; and these means being much more simple, were more worthy the Divine choice than those which are more complex, and could not have been used without producing the necessity of working at least double or treble miracles.

4. Before I proceed to the immediate object of inquiry, I shall beg leave to make some observations on the invention and construction of DIALS in general.

SUNDIALS must have been of great antiquity, though the earliest we hear of is that of Ahaz; but this cer

Aristarchus of Samos, who lived before Archimedes,

Probably all these were rude and evanescent attempts, for it does not appear that the Romans, who borrowed all their knowledge from the Greeks, knew any thing of a sundial before that set up by Papirius Cursor, about four hundred and sixty years after the foundation of Rome; before which time, says Pliny, there was no mention of any account of time but by the rising and setting of the sun. This dial was erected near the temple of Quirinus, but is allowed to have been very inaccurate. About thirty years after, the consul Marcus Valerius Messala brought a dial out of Sicily, which he placed on a pillar near the rostrum ; but as it was not made for the latitode of Rome, it did not show the time exactly; however, it was the only one they had for a hundred years, when Martius Philippus set up one more exact.

Since those times the science of dialling has been cultivated in most civilized nations, but we have no professed treatise on the subject before the time of the jesuit Clavius, who, in the latter part of the sixteenth century, demonstrated both the theory and practice of dialling; but he did this after the most rigid mathematical principles, so as to render that which was simple in itself exceedingly obscure. Though we have useful and correct works of this kind from Rivard, De Parcieux, Dom. Bedos de Celles, Joseph Blaise Garnier, Gravesande, Emerson, Martin, and Leadbetter; yet something more specific, more simple, and more general, is a desideratum in the science of sciaterics or dialling.

Observations on the nature and structure of the sundial of Ahaz, with a diagram of its supposed form. 5. When writing on the appointment of Jehu to be king of Israel, chap. ix., I was struck with the manner in which the subject of the thirteenth verse was understood by the Chaldee: "Then they hastened and took every man his garment, and put it under him, on the TOP of the STAIRS;" according to the Hebrew, nibyn hel gerem hammaaloth, which might be translated, on the bare (naked or uncovered) steps. This the Targumist has translated by xyw 17 lidrag sheaiya, "at the HOUR-STEPS." The other versions, knowing nothing of what was intended, have endeavoured to guess severally at a meaning. On turning to chap. xx. 11, where the same word hy maaloth is used, and most evidently there implies some kind of sundial, I found the Chaldee still more pointed, both in this and in the parallel place, Isa. xxxviii. 8, rendering the Hebrew words sy ny betsurath eben

Description of the

in the year.

To be able to understand this dial, one example will be sufficient: On the 21st of March, or the 23d of September, the shadow from the point of the gnomon will enter or ascend the first step of the dial, at the first hour of the day, at the west side of the dial on the equinoctial line; eleven minutes afterwards the shadow comes in contact with the circle marked fifteen degrees, which is the altitude of the sun at that time; twenty-four minutes afterwards the shadow touches the circle of twenty degrees ;- and in twenty-five minutes it ascends the second step, at the second hour of the day, when the altitude of the sun is twenty-five degrees eight minutes.

In twenty-four minutes the shadow comes to the circle of thirty degrees; and twenty-five minutes after it arrives at the circle of thirty-five degrees; and in eleven minutes it ascends the third step at the third hour of the day, when the altitude is thirty-six degrees fifty-seven minutes. In sixteen minutes the point of the shadow intersects the circle of forty degrees; and in forty-four minutes it ascends the fourth step at the fourth hour of the day, when the altitude of the sun is forty-seven degrees twenty-two minutes; and in eighteen minutes of time it comes in contact with the circle of fifty degrees, &c., &c., until it arrives at the meridian step or line at the sixth hour of the day, when the altitude is fifty-eight degrees ten minutes; then the shadow descends the sixth step, and moves on to the seventh, &c., descending step after step, tracing the equinoctial line on the east side of the dial; intersecting the steps or hour lines, and the circles of altitude, until it leaves the dial at the eleventh hour of the day.

A dial of this construction is the most simple, useful, and durable that can be made; and is exclusively and completely adapted to ascertain the ancient Jewish divisions of the solar hours.

The steps of this dial render the construction a little more difficult than it otherwise would be if the lines were drawn on a plane superficies, which would give exactly the same divisions of the hours.

N. B. A vertical south dial, in lat. thirty-one degrees fifty minutes, (the latitude of Jerusalem,) could be of little or no use to ascertain these divisions for several months in the year. The same remark may be made respecting a south vertical concave dial. The sun cannot shine upon a south vertical plane, in lat. thirtyone degrees fifty minutes in the longest day before fifty-three minutes past eight, or nearly nine, in the morning.

With respect to the dimensions of this dial, if we

work might be eighteen yards by twelve, making an oblong square facing the four cardinal points of the heavens.

N. B. All the lines upon a dial-plane are inverted, with respect to the cardinal points of the heavens. The lines which show the hours from sunrise to the meridian, are on the west side of the dial-plane; and the lines which show the hours from the meridian to sunset are on the east side of the dial-plane; the southern tropic, Capricorn, is on the north end of the dial-plane ; and the northern tropic, Cancer, is on the south end of the plane..

The narrow end of the dial looks towards the south, and is marked north; the wide end- looks north, and is marked south. The side which looks west is marked sunrise; and the side which looks east is marked sunset.

8. In the annexed diagram a transverse section of the dial is represented where the steps are seen at one view ascending and descending to and from the gnomon or stile on the upper or sixth step. These steps are all equal in their height, but unequal on their upper surface, as the diagram shows, and for the reasons alleged above, Each of these steps might have been divided into parts or degrees, to mark the smaller divisions of time; and to this sort of division there appears to be a reference in the text, where it is said, the shadow went back ten degrees. It seems the miracle was wrought in the afternoon, for it is said, The shadow was brought ten degrees BACKWARD, by which it had GONE DOWN; So it appears that the shadow had reascended ten degrees on the afternoon steps; and when this was done, so that all were fully convinced of the miracle, the shadow again descended to its true place on the steps; and this would be the immediate consequence of dissipating the vapours which I have supposed to be the agent which God employed to produce, by refraction, this most extraordinary phe

nomenon.

A dial constructed in this way, in the centre of a town, or some public place, would serve, not only to | give the divisions of time, but also as a place from which proclamations might be made; and especially from the upper step, where the speaker might stand by the gnomon, and be sufficiently elevated above the crowd below.

On such a place I have supposed Jehu to have been proclaimed king; and to do him honour his captains spread their garments on the steps; the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth, by which he ascended, to the sixth step, on which the gnomon was placed, and where he was proclaimed and acknowledged the king of Israel ; for it is said, The captains hasted, and took every man his GARMENT, and put it under him on the TOP of the STAIRS, and blew with trumpets, saying, JEHU is KING! 2 Kings ix. 13; where see the note.

Pietro Nonius or Nunnex, a celebrated Portuguese