An instrument much used before the invention of clocks, to tell the time of day by the progress of the sun's shadow. The dial of Ahaz, 2 Kings 20:11 Isaiah 38:1-9 , seems to have been peculiar either in structure or size, and was perhaps borrowed from Babylon or Damascus, 2 Kings 16:10 . The causing the shadow upon it to go back ten degrees, to assure king Hezekiah of his recovery from sickness, was probably effected not by arresting and turning backwards the revolution of the earth, but by a miraculous refraction of the sun's rays, observed only in Judea, though the fame of it reached Babylon, 2 Chronicles 32:31 .