Details in Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy 1:2 - (It takes 11 days to go from Horeb to Kadesh Barnea by the Mount Seir road.)

I wonder why Moses mentions this geographic/travel fact at the beginning of his final book. Mount Horeb (aka Sinai) was near the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. Kadesh Barnea was in the northeast corner of the peninsula. Eventually it would become part of the Israelite kingdom at the farthest reaches of their land to the southwest -- farther south than even Beersheba.

I wonder if Moses is hinting, "See, we could have made it from Horeb/Sinai to Canaan in about 2 weeks. It only took us 40 years more than that because your fathers didn't do as they were told. That's why you've had to grow up as nomads wandering from place to place in the desert." Or something like that.

I wonder if it took 11 days for an average caravan to make the trip. I wonder if it took 2.5 million people longer.

It just occurred to me that, with a group this size, there had to be births, circumcisions, weddings, and deaths pretty much every day of their journey. Maybe there were no weddings on the Sabbath though. Even if the entire trip from Egypt to Canaan had only taken a month, there were probably many elderly people who never would have seen the earthly Canaan anyway. They crossed their own Jordan into the heavenly promised land sooner than the earthly one -- a trip which was far better for them anyway.