What Does Isaiah 38:8 Mean in the King James?
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 analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
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.
“returned” in this verse is vatashov. 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 forth his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to his strength when the morning appeared; and the Egyptians fled against it; and the LORD overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea.The sea saw it, and fled: Jordan was driven back.He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.THE THREAD
And Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to his strength when the morning appeared; and the Egyptians fled against it; and the LORD overthrew the Egyptians in 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.
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