July 17th, 2017

Miles traveled per day.
​         How many miles a day could such a multitude have traveled with wagons (Numbers 7:3–8), children, the elderly, flocks, and all? For those who say Israel could not have traveled more than five or six miles a day because of the need to graze their herds and flocks, they need only look to the covered wagon trains and cattle drives of the western US. Wagon trains, unless hindered by forest, could travel twelve to sixteen miles a day. Cattle drives are said to have averaged fifteen miles a day or more, and their cattle actually gained weight at this pace. Their cattle grazed at noon and at night. Though it was not the norm, Barnes’ Notes on the Bible makes an interesting comment about miles per day from Genesis 31:20–24, saying it “would give him twelve days to travel three hundred English miles.” That would be twenty-five miles a day with children and herds. In truth, they (Jacob and his family) were fleeing from Laban, pushing themselves, but this shows that it was possible, and they sustained it for twelve days. Western sheep cannot be compared to the sturdy Bedouin sheep of the Middle East. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) website on Bedouin flocks, “Awassi sheep,” said, “flocks may be driven for as much as 35 km (21.75 miles) in 24 hours” (Williamson, 1949).1