What Does Isaiah 38:8 Mean?
Behold, I will turn back the shadow of the steps, the shadow that went down the stairs of Ahaz in the sun, ten backward. And the sun turned back ten steps, upon the very steps where it had gone down.
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
Behold, I will bring again the shadow of the degrees, which is gone down in the sun dial of Ahaz, ten degrees backward. So the sun returned ten degrees, by which degrees it was gone down.THE KEY
The sign is not merely the sun pausing: the Hebrew says it returns, turning completed descent into a path that can be retraced.
THE MEANING
A movement that seems to have completed its course is not beyond return. The verse holds time’s apparent one-way direction open to the will that governs it: what has gone down retraces its course.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this undoes is that what has already gone down cannot be brought back.
THE ROOT
וַתָּשָׁב
vatashov
GROWS FROM
שוב
Turn back; return.
The verse opens with God bringing the shadow back and closes with the sun returning: both verbs draw on שׁוּב (shuv), “to turn back, return.” The repeated root makes the reversal explicit, the descent is not merely interrupted but retraced.
ALSO GROWS
teshuvah: Return; turning back.
תְּשׁוּבָה
This branch names a return as a turning, echoing the sun’s reversed course.
meshuvah: Turning away; backsliding.
מְשׁוּבָה
The same root can describe a turn away, showing how return and departure are opposite directions of one turning.
THE PATTERN
What appears to have a fixed direction can be turned or returned under divine action.
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.The sea saw and fled; the Jordan turns backward.He has pulled the mighty down from their seats, and lifted up the low.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.Isaiah’s sun and Exodus’s sea share the Hebrew root שוב (shuv), “to return, turn back.” In Exodus, the sea’s return is forceful and deadly: the root holds restoration and danger in the same motion.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us