"They Were Fruitful and Increased Greatly and Multiplied and Became Mighty
SICHOT OF THE RASHEI HA-YESHIVA
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In memory of our grandparents, whose yahrzeits fall this week:
Shmuel Nachamu ben Shlomo Moshe HaKohen Fredman (10 Tevet)
Chaya bat Yitzchak David Fredman (15 Tevet)
Shimon ben Moshe Rosenthal (16 Tevet)
By their grandchildren and great-grandchildren,
Aaron and Tzipora Ross and family
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PARASHAT SHEMOT
"They Were
Fruitful and Increased Greatly
and Multiplied
and Became Mighty"
By Rav Yaakov
Translated by
Kaeren Fish
A. THE LENGTH
OF THE EGYPTIAN EXILE
"The sojourning
of Benei Yisrael which they dwelled in
All the
midrashim of the Tannaim, and all the commentators, align themselves with
the Septuagint, which contradicts the literal meaning of the verse - i.e., that
this period dates back to the descent of Yaakov and his family to
All of these
opinions "shorten" the Egyptian exile by about two hundred years, fixing its
length at 210, 215, 240 years, or the suchlike.
All of these
commentaries share the same single reason for their forced interpretation of the
verse. The succession of generations of Benei Yisrael, from those who
descended to
B. "THE FOURTH
GENERATION WILL RETURN HERE"
The succession
of the generations is listed in the Torah through the genealogy of various
families, and especially the three families of the Tribe of Yehuda (Divrei
Ha-yamim I 2):
a.
Chetzron was
among those who went down to
b.
Chetzron -
Kalev - Hur, one of the leaders of the nation at the time of the Exodus
(Shemot 17:12) [1].
c.
Chetzron -
Seguv - Yair, who conquered the north of Gilad (Bamidbar
32:41).
Such a short
list of generations could not conceivably have covered 430 years. Proof of this
difficulty may be brought from the list of generations of the tribe of Levi,
which appears in next week's parasha (6:16-26) and specifies the lifespan
of each of the generations. Rashi quotes this as support for his interpretation:
Kehat was among those who went down to
Admittedly,
Yehoshua's genealogy is longer (Divrei Ha-yamim I 7:20-27), spreading
easily over 430 years: Ephraim - Beri'a - Refach - Telach - Tachan - Ladan -
Amihud - Elishama - Nun - Yehoshua, and Yehoshua was among those who left Egypt.
Nevertheless, the proof from the generations of the Tribe of Levi appeared to
the commentators to be conclusive, and therefore they opted for the approach
described above.
C. "THEY WERE
FRUITFUL AND MULTIPLIED GREATLY" HOW?
We have
summarized the view of all the commentaries, but there is a single exception -
Shadal's commentary on the Torah. He insists that the Egyptian exile lasted just
as the verse says - 430 years [2]. To his view, the list of generations cannot
be used as a proof, for it is possible that the Torah leaves out some of them,
listing only the important ones. Kehat, for example, is said to have borne Amram
- but perhaps there were several generations in between them. An example of this
is to be found in the person of Zerubavel, son of Shaltiel (Chaggai
1:12), while in Divrei Ha-yamim I (3:17-19) we discover that he was not
his son but rather his grandson [3].
Shadal's
argument against the accepted interpretation seems quite solid. If we assume
that the generations of Levi, as they appear in our parasha, are listed
in full, then the generation of Kehat - the generation of those who went down to
Egypt - included three brothers: Gershon, Kehat and Merari. The generation of
Amram, Kehat's son (the generation preceding the Exodus) included Livni, Shim'i,
Amram, Yitzhar, Chevron, Uziel, Machli and Mushi - altogether
eight.
The number of
descendents of Levi at the time of the Exodus is 23,000. How is this
possible?
Let us
formulate our question differently. The Torah expounds on the astonishing
reproduction of the exiles in
D. AS 210
(REISH-DALED-VAV) THEY WENT DOWN (REDU)
In order not to
unnecessarily increase the Egyptian exile, and in order to maintain an
understanding of the matter that accords with that of the Sages, Rashi, the
Ramban and the other early commentators, we must find a way to answer Shadal's
most relevant question. I believe
that the key to the answer lies in the verse in Sefer
Bereishit:
"Now, your two
sons who were born to you in the
It seems to me,
according to the literal text, that Yosef had more than two sons. This is what
the verse is teaching us when it says, "To Yosef were born two sons BEFORE THE
YEARS OF FAMINE BEGAN" (Bereishit 41:50), implying that later on more
were born, and it is to these that Yaakov refers when he says, "whom you bear
after them." These children are not listed in the genealogy of Yosef's sons,
since they join in the inheritance of their brothers, Menashe and Ephraim.
Similarly, the Tanakh lists ten sons of King David (six in Chevron - Shmuel II
3:2-5, and four in
It is also
possible that many of the descendants of the tribes were killed or died all
kinds of terrible deaths during the Egyptian subjugation, and their children
joined the families of their fathers' brothers, just as the orphaned
Let us examine
one example, which may serve to strengthen our assumption. Yaakov went down to
E. SIX AT ONE
TIME
We have not yet
arrived at a satisfactory explanation of the unreasonable rate of reproduction,
turning seventy souls who came down to
Let us return
to Ephraim and the other tribes. If we assume, based on the genealogy of
Yehoshua, that a generation was twenty-one years, during the course of 190 years
(such that the last generation would be in their twenties at the time of the
Exodus) there would have been about nine generations - which is as the genealogy
describes.
Accordingly, we
may explain Chazal's teaching that the women used to bear "six at one
time" (literally, "six from one belly"). This does not mean that the women used
to bear sextets; that would be an altogether unnatural phenomenon. What the
teaching means is that every mother ("belly") would bear six children during the
course of her life. We may assume that, on average, these six children would be
three sons and three daughters - and this accords with the size of the families
noted in our parasha (keeping in mind that only the sons are
listed).
Let us now
attempt to calculate of the numbers of Benei
Yisrael.
Based on the
assumption that the generation that went down to
Assuming that
it was the seventh, eighth and ninth generations that left Egypt, after about
190 years there were six hundred thousand, and after 210 years - all were aged
20.
The miracle of
the reproductive multiplicity in
May God fulfill
for us His promise in the Torah:
"Be fruitful
and multiply; a nation and a community of nations shall emerge from you, and
kings will emerge from your loins." (Bereishit
35:11)
NOTES:
[1] Here I
ignore the Midrash which identifies Kalev ben Chetzron as Kalev ben
Yefuneh.
[2] If we add
to this his view on the system of historical research regarding the length of
the
[3] As to the
question arising from the verse, "the fourth generation will return here" - see
Rashbam ad loc.
[4] In our
estimation, there were only about ten thousand Levi'im aged twenty and upwards -
about a fifth of the average. We base this on a comparison between the number of
those aged one month and upwards, and the number of those aged thirty and
upwards.
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