Now public sanitation is an admirable thing, even if the reason for it was
as silly as this one, but this commandment presents to us another absurdity,
which I am sure that Dave Court will not see as a problem. Let's imagine
how many of the 3 million Israelites would have had to answer nature's call
in a day's time. To find relief, each person living in the center of the
camp would have had to trek through at least 2 miles of humanity to get out
of the camp where he/she could make use of the mandatory paddle. This is
based on my estimate of a need for at least 5 square miles to accommodate
the 2.5 to 3 million every time they stopped to camp, but some biblical
experts have estimated that a population this large would have required as
many as 12 square miles to accommodate all of the tents needed to house this
many people. If an average of 10 people, for example, lived in each tent,
this would have necessitated 250,000 to 300,000 tents, all needing guide
ropes to keep them stable. Anyway, you can imagine how distressing it would
have been to someone who would awake in the middle of the night with an
urgent need to "go abroad without the camp," even if the camp covered an
area no larger than 5 square miles.
If I had been an Israelite then, I would have asked Moses to let me pitch my
tent at the very edge of the encampment.
Farrell Till
Skepticism, Inc.
jftill@midwest.net