The Duration of the Egyptian Exile

Introduction

What was the length of the Children of Israel's stay in Egypt? This question has ramifications for understanding the Egyptian bondage and its backdrop, as well as the development of the Israelite nation.

Explicit Verses – 400 or 430 Years

The Torah explicitly addresses this issue in two places, first when the slavery is originally foretold and a second time upon its conclusion:

• Bereshit 15:13 – “וַיֹּאמֶר לְאַבְרָם יָדֹעַ תֵּדַע כִּי גֵר יִהְיֶה זַרְעֲךָ בְּאֶרֶץ לֹא לָהֶם וַעֲבָדוּם וְעִנּוּ אֹתָם אַרְבַּע מֵאוֹת שָׁנָה”
• Shemot 12:40 – “וּמוֹשַׁב בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֲשֶׁר יָשְׁבוּ בְּמִצְרָיִם שְׁלֹשִׁים שָׁנָה וְאַרְבַּע מֵאוֹת שָׁנָה”

These verses seem to imply that the duration of the exile in Egypt was either 400 or 430 years.

Four Generations

Other scriptural evidence, however, points to a much shorter period of time. The subsequent verse in Bereshit 15:16 states that already the fourth generation will return to the land of Israel, and four generations rarely span 400 years.¹

Moshe's Paternal Lineage – Three Generations From Levi

Additionally, Shemot 6 and Bemidbar 26 provide Moshe's lineage from both his paternal and maternal sides, and each of these appears to support a much shorter time frame. On Moshe's paternal side, his grandfather Kehat lived for 133 years and his father Amram lived to be 137 years old. As Kehat was one of the seventy souls who came down to Egypt with Yaakov,² taking the sum of his and Amram's entire lifespans together with Moshe's own age of 80 at the time of the Exodus,³ we arrive at a maximum total of only 350 years from the descent to Egypt until the Exodus.⁴

Moshe's Maternal Lineage – Two Generations From Levi

Moshe's maternal lineage creates even greater difficulties, as the Torah records that his mother Yocheved was a daughter of Levi, thereby implying that the three generations of Levi, Yocheved, and Moshe spanned the entire sojourn in Egypt. However, since Levi was approximately 43 years of age when the tribes came down to Egypt,⁵ even granting that Yocheved might have been born to Levi in the year of his death (at the age of 137), her birth would have occurred after the Israelites had been in Egypt at most 94 years. On the other hand, we also know that Moshe was born exactly 80 years before the Exodus. Thus, in order to reach a total of 400 (or 430) years in Egypt, one would need to assume that Yocheved was at least 226 (or 256) years old(!) when she gave birth to Moshe.

In Exegetical Approaches we will explore how various commentators resolve the larger contradiction between the explicit 400/430 numbers and the much lower figures indicated by Moshe and Aharon's lineage, as well as the smaller discrepancy between the 400 and 430 numbers themselves.

¹ Such a total would require the consistent fathering of sons at an average age of 100. See Hoil MosheShemot 6:18About Hoil Moshe who cites Avraham's disbelief in Bereshit 17:17 in assessing the unlikelihood of this possibility

² See Bereshit 46:11.

³ See Shemot 7:7 that Moshe was eighty when he came to Paroh. This number can also be calculated by subtracting the forty years in the desert from Moshe's age of 120 at his death (see Devarim 31:2, 34:7).

⁴ See Seder Olam RabbahCh. 3About Seder Olam Rabbah. This maximum computation of 350 would also require one to assume that Kehat was a newborn when the Israelites went down to Egypt, and that both he and Amram fathered their children in the year in which they died. Given the implausibility of these assumptions, the total was probably far less than 350 years. See RashiBereshit 15:13Shemot 6:18-20Shemot 12:40Megillah 9aAbout Rashi who notes: “והרבה שנים נבלעים לבנים בשני האבות”.

⁵ This is not explicit in the text but can be deduced from what we know about Yosef's age. Bereshit 41:46 tells us that Yosef was thirty years old when he first came to Paroh, and Bereshit 45:6,11 indicates that another nine years (seven years of plenty and two years of famine) passed before his family joined him in Egypt, at which point Yosef was 39. From Bereshit 30, it would appear that Levi was about four years older than Yosef.