King Hezekiah of Judah lay dying. The prophet Isaiah came to his bedside with what should have been the last message: set your house in order, for you shall die (2 Kings 20:1). Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and wept. God heard him and sent Isaiah back with fifteen more years. As a sign, the shadow on the sundial of Ahaz moved ten steps backward (2 Kings 20:11). The sun reversed its course in the sky for a single dying king in Jerusalem.
Across the world in Babylon, the king Merodach-baladan rose early as usual to pay his morning reverence to the sun. He looked up and saw that the sun was in the wrong place. It was already high, as if noon had arrived before breakfast. Merodach panicked. He assumed he had overslept, missed the sunrise, insulted his god. He called in his advisors in a rage.
No, they told him. You did not oversleep. The sun itself moved backward this morning because of a miracle in Judah. A king there was near death, and his God answered his prayer.
Merodach was astonished. He sent a letter of greeting to Hezekiah (Isaiah 39:1), a royal delegation from Babylon to Jerusalem. He had already drafted the letter, putting his own name first as was the custom. But after hearing about the miracle, he stopped, realized something, and took three full steps to call the messenger back. He wanted the letter rewritten. God's name, he said, must go before mine. A king whose God can pull the sun backward is not a king I address as an equal.
For that act of humility, the Talmud teaches, Merodach received a reward. Three of his descendants, including Nebuchadnezzar, became kings of Babylon. Three steps forward to honor God bought three generations of thrones.
This story from tractate Sanhedrin 96a, preserved in The Exempla of the Rabbis (Gaster, 1924), teaches that even a pagan king can be rewarded for a moment of reverence. Three footsteps in the right direction can change a dynasty.