Bible Lands

To anyone accustomed to America’s interstate highway system, it is easy to give a misimpression by referring to the “International Coastal Highway,” the important ancient transportation route we will be discussing in this article.

Indeed, even by the standard of Roman highways a thousand or two thousand years later, this International Coastal Highway must be considered crude.

Do you recall the poetic tribute Ethelyn Miller Hartwich wrote to the great Roman roads?

“Great roads the Romans built that men might meet, And walls to keep strong men apart, secure. Now centuries are gone, and in defeat The walls are fallen, but the roads endure.”¹

No such tribute would be penned of the International Coastal Highway from Egypt through Canaan to Babylonia, on which caravans and armies coursed throughout most periods of biblical history.

Critical though it was to life, commerce and war, the International Coastal Highway was merely a narrow, winding path—clogged by mud after winter rains, dusty and rutted during the many months of dry, searing heat. Travel along it was both primitive and perilous, especially in the hilly and mountainous terrain of Canaan.