Everything Took  Forty Days Joseph Francis Alward May 8, 1999 "The place was called the brook Eshcol, because of the cluster of grapes which the children of Israel cut down from thence. And they returned from searching of the land after forty days."  (Numbers 13:24-25)

                    E-Mail Alward                     Home Page

 
Bible events lasting exactly forty days happened often in Biblical times. There are eighteen separate events of duration greater than ten days, and 61% of the time the event lasted exactly forty days. Only seven of eighteen events did not last forty days [1], while the other eleven lasted forty days [2].  The events which spanned forty days were independent of each other, so it seems extraordinary that so many events would occupy exactly the same amount of time.  Did these events really last exactly forty days, or was this time period of particular mythological importance, and the writers just assumed that events of supreme importance must have taken this long.

...................................................................................................................................................
(1) Acts 24:11 (eleven days); 1 Kings 8:64 (fourteen); Galatians 1:18 (fifteen); Daniel 10:13 (twenty-one), Numbers 20:29 (thirty), Deuteronomy 34:8 (thirty), and Leviticus 12:4 (thirty-three).

(2) All of the following events lasted forty days:  Genesis 7:4, Genesis 50:3, Exodus 24:18, Numbers 13:25, Deuteronomy 9:9, Deuteronomy 10:10, 1 Samuel 17:16, 1 Kings 19:8, Ezekiel 4:6, Jonah 3:4, Matthew 4:2.