What Does 2 Kings 20:11 Mean?
And Isaiah the prophet called out to the LORD, and he turned the shadow back ten steps, by which it had gone down on the steps of Ahaz.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the LORD: and he brought the shadow ten degrees backward, by which it had gone down in the dial of Ahaz.THE KEY
The Hebrew verb says the LORD makes the shadow return, reversing the very measure that marked its descent.
THE MEANING
The verse places a measured descent before you and shows it being turned back by the LORD. The same degrees that mark the shadow’s going down now mark its return, so descent is not the final word in the image.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that once something has moved downward, its course cannot turn back.
THE ROOT
וַיָּשֶׁב
wayyashev
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
shuv
Turn, return; in this verb form, cause to return.
“turned the shadow back ten steps” in this verse is wayyashev. וַיָּשֶׁב (wayyashev, caused to return) comes from שׁוּב (shuv, turn or return): the action is not merely stopping the shadow but turning it back. The English “backward” carries a return within the sign, the shadow retraces the measure by which it went down.
ALSO GROWS
heshiv: Bring back, restore; cause to return.
הֵשִׁיב
This causative form shows how the root can describe an agent turning something back, as the LORD does to the shadow.
teshuvah: Turning, return.
תְּשׁוּבָה
This noun preserves the root’s sense of a turn back, echoing the reversal visible in the shadow’s path.
THE PATTERN
Restoration turns what is moving toward loss back toward wholeness.
Turn back our captivity, O LORD, as the channels of the south.And I will make whole for you the years that the locust has eaten, the lapper, the gnawer, and the shearer, my great army which I sent among you.Brothers, even if a person is caught in a stumble, you who are of the breath, mend such a one in the breath of gentleness, watching yourself, lest you also be tested.THE THREAD
And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the sea turned back to its strength at the face of the morning, and the Egyptians fled to meet it, and the LORD shook the Egyptians out into the midst of the sea.“Returned” here comes from שׁוּב (shuv, turn or return), the same root behind the LORD’s act of bringing the shadow back. In Exodus, the sea’s return closes over Egypt; here, the shadow’s return becomes a sign, the shared root names the turn, while each verse shows its consequence.
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