Pemikiran Yahudi Yosua 1:4: The Third Beit HaMikdash

This reckoning concurs precisely with the mishnah in Taanis, ch. 1,²⁹Taanis 10a. which states that the prayers for rain were delayed 15 days after the conclusion of the Sukkos festival, to enable the last of the pilgrims to reach his home on the Euphrates River. The Euphrates is in the north of Eretz Yisrael, and serves as a border between Eretz Yisrael and Babylonia, as stated in Kiddushin,³⁰See Kiddushin 71b. and as stated by Rashi in his commentary to the verse in the beginning of Yehoshua:³¹Yehoshua 1:4. “From the desert… until the great river, the Euphrates.” There are seven tribes whose portions are north of the Great Terumah. Thus, a festive pilgrim who sojourns in the city,³²I.e., Jerusalem of the Future. See the map of the future division of Eretz Yisrael above. which is in the southern portion of the Great Terumah, will have to pass through eight portions of land on his journey home. Each of these portions is 75 mil wide. If we round up the amount of parsaos in each area, the pilgrim will have to travel through 8 * 19 parsaos, or 152 parsaos, on his way home. However, as we explained above, each mil only equals 18.75 parsaos. Therefore, we now have to deduct the extra .25 parsaos we added to each mil. If we multiply .25 parsaos by the 8 mil the pilgrim is traveling through, we see that we have to deduct 2 parsaos from the 152 parsaos arrived at above, leaving us with a total of 150 parsaos. Our Sages calculated that a person walks 40 mil, i.e., 10 parsaos, a day.³³See Pesachim 94a. Thus, it will be a 15 day journey from Jerusalem to the Euphrates.³⁴Mahadura Basra. Tosafos Yom Tov elaborates on this concept in his commentary to Taanis 1:3. In that source, he also explains that there are halachic rationales that would allow a person to continue walking on Shabbos. Thus, the Mishnah’s words “a fifteen-day journey” could be understood literally.