Behold, I will cause the shadow on the sundial, which has gone down on the sundial of Ahaz with the sun, to return backward ten steps.” ’ ” So the sun returned ten steps on the sundial on which it had gone down.
World English Bible
Isaiah 38:8
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WEB World English Bible Public Domain ✓ - Modern English
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- F35 Family 35 New Testament Wilbur Pickering's Byzantine-priority New Testament, with text-critical commentary notes · CC BY-SA 4.0
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- KJV King James Version Public Domain
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Examined in Scripture Analysis
Science (1)
Historical claims about the natural world, weighed against the scientific record.
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The sun can move backwards in the sky.
Astronomy · Isaiah 38:8
The scientific record: The sun's apparent daily motion is produced by Earth's rotation, and no known mechanism could reverse that apparent motion without catastrophic consequences. (NASA)
Contradictions (1)
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
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Why did God turn the sundial back ten degrees?
2 Kings 20:7-11 makes the sundial sign about confirming Hezekiah's healing from a boil. Isaiah 38:4-8 (in the parallel narrative) makes it about confirming the promise of fifteen additional years and deliverance from Assyria.
Critical scholarship: Leans toward a genuine contradiction.
More on this question
The proposed answers and sources for each reading are on the question page.
Each section sets the viewpoints side by side; you weigh the evidence. Here, "critical scholarship" means academic study, not a value judgment. How this is built →
Other verses examined for the same kind of question or claim
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This citation refers to this GEBible page — the verse and the analysis gathered here. To cite the underlying scholarship, cite those sources directly.
"Isaiah 38:8 — Scripture Analysis" GEBible, https://gebible.app/analysis/verse/isaiah/38/8?version=WEB (retrieved 27 August 2026).