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Since Levi lived about 93 years in Egypt and Aharon 83 years, only 44 years separated the death of one from the birth of the other: not some extended difference, relying on imagined, unnamed intervening generations. In fact, by cutting away all unattested gaps with Occam's razor, I personally place Aharon's birth in the year exactly 2400 after Creation, or the 17th century BC.

So the oppression and later enslavement must have been less than 144 years (counting from Yosef's death, Exodus 1:8). The strongest oppression really started at Moshe's birth, for a period of 80 years (Aharon had not been thrown in the Nile three years earlier). And the strongest slavery really started in the final year, when the brickmaking straw, which the Hebrew slaves were compelled to find for themselves, became literally the last straw.

This historical background allows us to correct disheartening mistranslations of Genesis 15:13. Since all three key verbs are sequential and parallel, the roughly 400 years refers actually to the period in which any of the three verbs applies: "Your descendants will be foreigners in a land [Kena'an and Egypt] that is not theirs [and] will be slaves and [will be] held in oppression [over] four hundred years [four centuries]."

This translation is consistent with the prophetic principle of specifying the era but not the exact date. It also lets us apprehend the encouragement hidden in Moshe's family tree: Take heart! The sufferings of the righteous are never overextended, and threats to the contrary are overrated.

Yet the elders of Isra'el were discouraged when Moshe threatened God's "great judgments" upon all, open-ended and indefinite (Exodus 6:6). They need not have feared: God's chastening of his righteous people is never like his punishment of the wicked and hardhearted.

Though he permitted Isra'el to face the first three and most minor plagues (blood in the river, frogs, and lice), he exempted them as the plagues worsened through swarms of insects, death on the livestock, infected sores, and hail on everything growing. In the time of trial, God's people may face a cleansing discipline, but can count on protection during great tribulation. Isra'el's family suffered only two years of the seven-year "great tribulation" famine (for this designation, see Acts 7:11).

Two further applications of these familiar plagues to later days, including our own, are given by the haftarah in Ezekiel 28:25-29:21 and the harmony in Revelation 16:1-21. First, Ezekiel (Yechezk'el)

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