While visiting in the Middle East, my wife Judy and I were surprised how small the area actually is as compared to what we imagined it to be. Those of us living in the United States, Canada or Australia think very little of a week long automobile trip to go from coast to coast. However, as the information below indicates, even a person traveling on foot could walk the entire length of Israel in only a few days.
Furthermore, the mostly stark barren countryside is one not everybody appreciates. Many places in the Bible referred to as mountains look more like hills and the "sea" of Galilee is really just a large lake. Professor Barry J. Beitzel adds this interesting perspective in his preface to The Moody Atlas of Bible Lands, "The Atlas seeks to set forth and develop a central thesis: namely, that God prepared the Promised Land for His chosen people with the same degree of care that He prepared His chosen people for the Promised Land. The Promised Land might have been created as an environment without blemish; it might have exhibited ecological or climatological perfection. It might have been prepared as a tropical rain forest through which coursed an effusion of crystal-clear water; it might have been created as a thickly-carpeted grassy meadow or as an elegant garden suffused with the aroma of flowers and blossoms. It might have been---but it was not. As I will attempt to demonstrate, God prepared for His chosen people a land that embodied the direst of geographic hardship. Possessing meager physical and economic resources and caught inescapably in a maelstrom of political upheaval, the Promised Land has yielded up to its residents a simple, tenuous, mystifying, and precarious existence, even under the best of circumstances. It is an important and helpful insight to realize that God prepared a certain kind of land, positioned at a particular spot, designed to elicit a specific and appropriate response. God has been at work in both geography and history." The Moody Atlas of Bible Lands, 1985, page xv.

How Far Is It From Jerusalem To...?
Amman Jordan--56 miles
Baghdad--600 miles
Bethlehem--6 miles
Cairo--315 miles
Jericho*--18 miles
Nazareth--98 miles
New York--12 hours flying time
Petra-- 220 miles
The Dead Sea**--18 miles
The Sea of Galilee--80 miles
The Mediterranean Sea***--36 miles

* Jericho is one of the oldest cities in the world. It was the first city to be conquered in the Promised Land. It is 830' below sea level and the climate is sub-tropical.
** The Dead Sea is called dead because it is too salty to support life. Its saltiness comes from the high mineral deposits in the soil under it and because the sea has no outlet. The countries surrounding the Dead Sea extract valuable minerals from it by evaporation.
*** The Israeli coast along the Mediterranean Sea has a pleasant mild climate.

Factoids About Distance, Travel and Weather
Jerusalem can have cold winds and occasionally snow in the winter, but only 15 miles east, down in the Jordan valley, is where bananas and date palms grow. You can swim in the Dead Sea while, less than 20 miles away, the Mount of Olives lies under snow.

It is 65 miles from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea, but the Jordan river, which connects them, travels 200 miles. This makes it the most crooked river in the world!

In Jesus' time 24 miles was about one day's journey on an animal.

Bible writers often used the expression from Dan to Beer-sheba (from north to south) to describe the whole length of the country. This is only 140 miles as the crow flies. Measuring from west to east it is approximately 30 miles from the Mediterranean to the Sea of Galilee and 55 miles from the Mediterranean (at Gaza) to the Dead Sea. Today the greatest distances north to south is 256 miles by 81 miles east to west. The coastline is 143 miles long.

According to the Pharisees of Jesus' time, a Sabbath's day's journey was 2,000 cubits or 2,916' or if you stashed some food ahead of time you could establish a residence there and therefore walk another 2,916 feet or another 729 paces on a Sabbath day's journey. Today it is a common sight to see a wire strung up beside the road of a village marking the legal limit one can travel outside the village on Sabbath.

Blessings in your study of God's Word!

Marvin Hunt

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