From Levi's Death to Moshe's Birth

Real questions, submitted by actual OU Torah followers, with their real answers. NOTE: For questions of practical halacha, please consult your own rabbi for guidance.

Q. Does the written Torah tell us the amount of time between the death of Levi and the birth of Moses? Can we deduce from the written Torah that Israel was in Egypt 210 years?

A. Thanks for your question, which was forwarded to my attention. From the Torah, we can only operate from the assumption that the 400-year exile is counted from the birth of Yitzchak: Yitzchak was 60 when Yaakov was born; Yaakov was 130 when he went to Egypt. This equals 190 years, so the Jews spent 210 years in Egypt.

We have a tradition about how much older Levi was than Yoseif (four years), from which we can easily calculate how old Levi was when he went to Egypt (43). The Torah tells us that Levi lived to be 137 (Exodus 6:16), which means that he spent 94 years in Egypt. If the servitude started when Levi died, that means that the Jews were only actually enslaved for a maximum of 116 years. (See Seder Olam Rabbah.)

If Levi died 116 years before the Exodus, and Moshe was 80 at the time of the Exodus, then Moshe would have been born 36 years after Levi died.

For more on this topic, see Rashi on Exodus 12:40, Genesis 35:29, et al.

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