Hezekiah’s Illness and the “Steps of Ahaz”: A Proposal for Dating the Story’s Emergence in Light of a Solar Eclipse
Open accessAbstract
This article deals with the story of Hezekiah’s illness and recovery (2 Kgs 20:1–11 // Isa 38), which forms part of the narrative of Hezekiah’s reign in the books of Kings and Isaiah. Despite its integration in the larger narrative, this story was originally a self-contained literary unit. The article discusses the relationship between the story’s versions in Kings and Isaiah, concurring with the prevailing view that the Isaiah version is an adaptation of that in Kings, as well as the story’s inner structure, where the original kernel (2 Kgs 20:1–7) was later supplemented with the miraculous element of the shadow receding ten steps on “the steps of Ahaz” to mark Hezekiah’s recovery. The article suggests that the event that gave rise to this addition was the solar eclipse of January 12, 662 BCE, implying that the story’s original kernel existed prior to that date.
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“…the death of Ahaz and that of an unnamed (Assyrian) king who smote Philistia – most probably Tiglath-pileser III (Isa 14:28–29) – and of the evidence of Judean fiscal bullae, which suggests that the death of Ahaz and the enthronement of Hezekiah took place in 727 BCE (Na’aman, 2024; Bloch, 2025).”
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Research works printed but not linked: 11
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- Authors
- Bloch, Y.
- Affiliations
- Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem
- Corresponding author
- Bloch, Yigal
- ORCID
- Bloch, Yigal
- Venue
- Ruch Biblijny i Liturgiczny
- Published
- 2026-03-31
- Volume
- 79
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 5-25
- ISSN
- 0209-0872 (ISSN-L)
- 2391-8497
- OpenAlex
- W7210271302
- Cited by
- 0
- References
- 24
- FWCI
- 0.00
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- pl
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Ruch Biblijny i Liturgiczny (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Religious studies › Biblical Studies and Interpretation
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Archeology › Ancient Near East History
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Classical Studies and Philology
- Keywords
- literary composition, Ahaz, Hebrew Bible narrative
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