“And there ran a man of Benjamin out of the battle, and came to Shiloh the same day.” (I Samuel 4:12)

One of the first runs mentioned in human history happened in the Bible, at the beginning of the Book of Samuel – a man from Benjamin ran from the battlefield in Afek (identified with modern-day Rosh Ha'ayin) to tell Eli the High Priest in Shiloh of the terrible defeat of the Israelite army.

Thousands of years after that soldier’s run - in a torn uniform and in great pain - the Jewish People returned to its homeland.

Following the Six Day War, Yosef Yekutieli, the visionary of the Maccabiah Games (the Jewish Olympics), measured the route from Rosh Ha'ayin to Ancient Shiloh. To his great surprise, the distance of the biblical run was exactly the length of the modern marathon – 42.2 kilometers (the official length of the marathon that was set for the 1908 London Olympics).

The Bible Marathon recreates the historic run from Rosh Ha'ayin (biblical Afek) to Ancient Shiloh, in an amazing and colorful international sports event (with various levels of difficulty, for professional runners and whole families), with the route wending its way through vineyards, hills and renewed communities – running history!