“ They spent enough time [in the booth] for one to walk another mile. [Thus by the time they had returned to Jerusalem] it would be known that the goat had reached the wilderness.
Rabbi Ishmael said: But there was yet another way for them to tell. A strip of crimson cloth would be tied to the gate of the Temple, and when the goat had reached the wilderness, the strip would blanch, as it is written: “though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” ”