Sabbath Days' Journeys to Meters (sabbath to m)

1 Sabbath day's journey equals 1,080 meters exactly.

1 Sabbath day's journey = 1,080 meters

How to convert Sabbath days' journeys to meters

To convert Sabbath days' journeys to meters, multiply the number of Sabbath days' journeys by 1,080. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply meters by 0.0009259259259 (rounded).

meters = Sabbath days' journeys × 1,080

Example: 10 Sabbath days' journeys = 10,800 meters.

Approximate value. Standards for the Sabbath day's journey varied by place and period, so this converter uses the most commonly cited value. Treat results as estimates, not exact figures.

About these units

Sabbath Day's Journey (sabbath)

Biblical (Hebrew)Historical unit (no longer in standard use)Approximate value

About 2,000 cubits (roughly 1.08 km), the distance a person could walk on the Sabbath according to rabbinic tradition.

Jewish law limits how far a person may travel from a town on the Sabbath, and that limit is the techum shabbat. It is set at 2,000 cubits beyond the settlement boundary, the same distance known as a biblical mile. The phrase Sabbath day's journey is the traditional English name, and the distance was also used to measure the spacing of towns in the Herodian era, for instance Sepphoris to Tiberias at 18 such miles.

The metric value depends on the cubit chosen. Taking a cubit of 46 to 60 cm gives a range of about 960 m to 1,152 m, and the figure used here, about 1.08 km, comes from the 54 cm rabbinic cubit. That is about two thirds of an English statute mile, or roughly six Greek stadia. Most authorities reckon it at about 18 minutes of walking, while Maimonides gave 20 to 24 minutes. An eruv techumin can add a second mile to the permitted limit.

1 Sabbath day's journey = 1,080 meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Sabbath day's journey (biblical mile); Wikipedia: Cubit

Meter (m)

Metric (SI)Current unit

The SI base unit of length. Since 1983 it is defined as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.

Meter comes from the Greek metron, a measure. In 1791 the French National Assembly defined it as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along a great circle through Paris, after rejecting the length of a seconds pendulum because that length changes with local gravity. The surveyors Delambre and Méchain measured the meridian arc, and in 1799 a platinum bar known as the Mètre des Archives became the physical standard. NIST notes that this Earth-based meter turned out to be about 0.2 mm shorter than the true pole-to-equator fraction it was meant to represent.

The 1875 Treaty of the Meter created the CGPM and the BIPM to look after common standards, and in 1889 a platinum-iridium prototype bar took over; the original is still kept at the BIPM. In 1960 the meter was tied to 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of an orange-red krypton-86 line, and in 1983 to the speed of light, which made length a quantity derived from the time standard. The 2018 revision reworded that definition without changing the meter's size. NIST offers a handy yardstick for scale: a pace, meaning two steps, is roughly a meter or a yard.

The meter is the reference unit for length on this site.

Sources: BIPM: history of the metre; NIST: the meter and the SI redefinition; Wikipedia: Metre

Related conversions

See all length units.