[Avodah] How long was Shib'ud Mitzrayim?

Micha Berger via Avodah avodah at lists.aishdas.org
Tue Feb 7 19:46:55 PST 2017


On Mon, Jan 30, 2017 at 06:46:25PM -0500, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
: We often say that the slavery in Mitzrayim was "only" 210 years. The best I
: can figure, that would be the span from 2238 (when Yaakov and the family
: joined Yosef) until the Exodus in 2448...
: 
:                      Rashi (Shemos 6:16) says that there was no slavery
: until the last of the brothers died, and that was Levi...
:                                   only the last 116 years were actual
: slavery.

: The Torah Anthology (Parshas Shemos, pg 150) gives two more possibilities:
: (1) The slavery began with Miriam's birth, and lasted 83 years and 4
: months. (2) He gives another calculation, leading to 86 years minus 40 days.

There isn't necessarily a machloqes here. The slavery started slowly,
hava nischaqmah lo. One could validly pick various definitions of intense
enough to be labeled the start of "real slavery" without arguing
over the history of how things devolved.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha



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