King Hezekiah was sick. King Hezekiah was going to die. He was 39 years old, and had reigned as king of Judah for 14 years. The prophet Isaiah told the king to "set thine house in order, for thou shalt die." (2 Kings 38:1).

Hezekiah mourned over that announcement and said, "I am deprived of the residue of my years," "turned his face toward the wall, and prayed unto the Lord." (Isaiah 38:10 and 2).

God heard his prayer, saw his tears, and said, "I will add unto thy days fifteen years." (v. 5). "And this shall be a sign unto thee from the Lord ... Behold, I will bring again the shadow of the degrees, which is gone down in the sun dial ... ten degrees backward. So the sun returned ten degrees." (vs. 5, 7-8).

How did it do that? Did the sun move backward, or was it the earth that made that impossible movement? Or did the Lord simply make the shadow move? No matter how you look at that event, it was an unprecedented movement. It was a true astronomical phenomenon.

The date was probably about 711 B.C. We can accurately say that because in the fourth year of Hezekiah's reign the northern kingdom was conquered and carried off to Assyria. (2 Kings 18:9-12). That took place in 721 B.C. Ten years later Hezekiah got sick.

In those days they didn't have clocks. They told time using sun dials. I try to imagine how that would have been. You couldn't say "I'll meet you at 10 o'clock." The word clock wasn't even in their vocabulary. Instead, you'd probably say, "I'll meet you mid morning." Clocks didn't come into existence until about 1200 A.D., and they weren't very accurate.

In Hezekiah's day he couldn't look at his wrist watch or cell phone to see what time it was. He had to go outside and consult the sun dial. If it was cloudy there was no telling what the time was. But, interestingly, they knew about degrees. Apparently circles had already been divided into 360 degrees, and the sun went back ten degrees. I find these things very interesting.

Also interesting is this matter of a person's age. The ages are given in the Bible of all the kings of both Israelite kingdoms. Not many lived to be old men. Hezekiah was one of the few really good kings, and he only made it to 54. That's pretty young. He was "deprived of the residue of (his) years."

In just three weeks I will turn 78. I wonder how long the residue of my years will be. I have already lived past the average age of an American male born when I was. That means that over half of my classmates who graduated in 1965 are already gone. Over half of the other 59 men with whom I served in my naval boot camp company are gone.

I could go anytime, I suppose. I am perfectly healthy, though, so I'm expecting to have another 10 years. My goal is to outlive Marjorie. I want to take care of her until the Lord takes her. We're both ready, and are looking forward to the event. There's no dread about it.

Where age is concerned, I'm also thinking about Sariah, Nephi's mother. She probably married Lehi at about age 16. When we are introduced to her in the Book of Mormon she had four big boys. I'm guessing that Nephi, the youngest of the four, was 15 years old. Sam would then have been perhaps 17, Lemuel 19, and Laman 21.

Although, when I was in elementary school I was invited to my classmate's birthday party, and was surprised to learn that his birthday was also the birthday of his next oldest and his next youngest brothers. All three boys were born on the same day, one year apart.

So if Nephi was 15 at the beginning of the Book of Mormon, Laman could have been as young as 18 or 19, but was most likely about 21. Nephi couldn't have been younger than 15 and have been able to overpower Zoram.

So here was Sariah with four grown, or nearly grown, boys, It's very likely that she had two girls older than Laman. I suspect they were the wives of Ishmael's two sons. That would explain why Lehi sent his sons to convince Ishmael to come join them in the desert, and why Ishmael and his family consented. The families already knew each other and were connected by these two marriages. The Lord had even looked ahead and provided the proper number of girls in Ishmael's family to make wives for Lehi's sons and even for Zoram who the Lord knew would be joining Lehi's family.

If Sariah had two girls older than Laman, the eldest would have been as old as 25. She would have been born when Sariah was 17. When the Book of Mormon story begins, Sariah would have been 42. That's possibly a bit too old considering subsequent events. She must not have gotten two full years between the births of those six babies.

I'm going to say that Sariah was age 40 as the Book of Mormon story begins. I'm also guessing that she was pregnant with Jacob when they fled Jerusalem. Joseph was born two years later when Sariah was 42 or 44.

But that leaves a childbearing gap of 15 or 16 years between Nephi and Jacob. That shouldn't be right. Perhaps Sariah had some girls between Nephi and Jacob. That would account for Nephi's statement when he parted company with the Lamanites that he took his sisters. (2 Nephi 5:6). Otherwise the sisters would have had to be the wives of Ishmael's sons. If that was so, it is no wonder that the Lamanites were so upset with the Nephites.

Sariah was 40 or 42 when they left Jerusalem. She was 48 or 50 when they reached Bountiful. The record doesn't say it, but it probably took Nephi a couple of years to build the ship. They then had to cross two oceans in a sailing vessel. Did that take a year? Sariah apparently made it to the Promised Land.

She was about 53 years old when they got there. What a life! None of it was easy. She was essential to the plan. We owe her a huge debt of gratitude.