Click here for the Scholar chat schedule.
Email us your question and we'll try to respond within 24 hours.
Type in your email address here:
Select a topic:
Type in your question here:
The Scholar is ready to answer your question. Click the button below to chat now.
A Scholar is currently unavailable at this time, so please check back again. In the meantime you can click here to email Moses your question or search our archives for related topics.
PRINT EMAIL COMMENT
When G-d and Abraham sealed the "Covenant Between the Parts," G-d told Abraham, "You shall surely know that your seed will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and they will enslave them and oppress them, for four hundred years" (Genesis 15:13). However, the entire four hundred years were not spent in Egypt. Rather, they started with the birth of Isaac thirty years later.* G-d told Abraham that his "seed will be strangers in a land that is not theirs," and beginning with the birth of Issac, Abraham's seed dwelt in a land that was not yet their own.
it is mathematically impossible to say that the Jews actually spent 400 years in Egypt
[Rashi on Exodus 12:40 explains why it is mathematically impossible to say that the Jews actually spent 400 years in Egypt.]
The actual back-breaking slavery started approximately 86 years before the Exodus.
* The 430 years referenced in Exodus 12:30 started with the actual "Covenant Between the Parts."
ADD A COMMENT
Holidays » Passover » The Story