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Hezekiah, King of Judah, was sick unto death and prayed earnestly for an extension to his days. The prophet Isaiah came to him to say that 15 years would be added to his life, and the Lord would send him a sign of this. "Behold, I will bring again the shadow of the degrees, which is gone down in the sun dial of Ahaz, 10 degrees backward. So the sun returned 10 degrees, by which degrees it was gone down." Isaiah 38:8.
A solar eclipse seems to have happened, making the shadow move in a way that gave the impression that time had been reversed. Ahaz, the wicked predecessor of Hezekiah, probably obtained the sundial from the Babylonians, and it is guessed to have been something like a series of steps with a post on top. Whatever its design, from the above verse it can be seen that it was capable of yielding quantitative measurements. What happened next is described as "...the business of the ambassadors of the princes of Babylon, who sent unto him to inquire of the wonder that was done in the land." 2 Chronicles, 32:31
Merodach-baladan, King of Babylon, sent these ambassadors evidently for the specific purpose of collecting the data on the event that just occurred. The Babylonians were keenly interested in astronomy and astrology and would have greatly valued anything that could aid their understanding in these matters. If the sundial was of their construction, they probably had a good idea of how to extract the information they needed from the recorded data.