Shemot - What's in a Name?

(1) These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each coming with his household:

(1) These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each coming with his household:(2) Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah;(3) Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin;(4) Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher.(5) The total number of persons that were of Jacob’s issue came to seventy, Joseph being already in Egypt.(6) Joseph died, and all his brothers, and all that generation.(7) But the Israelites were fertile and prolific; they multiplied and increased very greatly, so that the land was filled with them.(8) A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph.(9) And he said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us.(10) Let us deal shrewdly with them, so that they may not increase; otherwise in the event of war they may join our enemies in fighting against us and rise from the ground.” (11) So they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor; and they built garrison cities for Pharaoh: Pithom and Raamses.(12) But the more they were oppressed, the more they increased and spread out, so that the [Egyptians] came to dread the Israelites.

(8) These are the names of the Israelites, Jacob and his descendants, who came to Egypt. Jacob’s first-born Reuben;

(1) These are the words that Moses addressed to all Israel on the other side of the Jordan.—Through the wilderness, in the Arabah near Suph, between Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth, and Di-zahab,

(1) ואלה שמות בני ישראל NOW THESE ARE THE NAMES OF THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL — Although scripture has already enumerated them by name whilst they were living, when they went down into Egypt (Genesis 46:8-27), it again enumerates them when it tells us of their death, thus showing how dear they were to God — that they are compared to the stars which also God brings out and brings in by number and name when they cease to shine, as it is said, (Isaiah 40:26) “He bringeth out their host by number, He calleth them all by name” (Exodus Rabbah 1:3; Tanchuma Yashan 1:1:2).

(19) And God יהוה formed out of the earth all the wild beasts and all the birds of the sky, and brought them to the Human to see what he would call them; and whatever the Human called each living creature, that would be its name.(20) And the Human gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and to all the wild beasts; but no fitting counterpart for a human being was found.

(1) ואלה שמות, seeing that the Torah wanted to let us know how the Israelites had increased and multiplied (verse 3) it became necessary to repeat that when they had arrived in Egypt they had numbered only 70 souls. The dramatic increase in numbers of Israelites began only with the death of the generation that had moved there from the land of Canaan. As a result, when a new king came to the throne in Egypt, he wanted to diminish their numbers and did not succeed in doing so.

(1)  According to Ibn Ezra the reason why the Torah decided to repeat the names of the sons of Yaakov here once more is because at the end of the last portion of the Book of Bereshit the Torah described how Joseph lived to see grandchildren and great grandchildren and how they multiplied. The Torah now wants us to know that the other sons of Yaakov experienced a similar blessing after arriving in Egypt. ... The report helps to establish the fact that the Book of Exodus is a direct continuation of the Book of Genesis.

(1) אלה, the ones mentioned here were deserving to be mentioned with their names. The reason is that each one of them possessed sufficient individuality to give meaning to his name. They were all of them an inspiration to their children as not one of them abandoned his family tradition.

(1) פרו וישרצו, after the last of the original 70 migrants had died, their whole lifestyle became more like that of creeping insects, creatures headed for destruction.

(1) A certain member of the house of Levi went and took [into his household as his wife] a woman of Levi.(2) The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw how beautiful he was, she hid him for three months.(3) When she could hide him no longer, she got a wicker basket for him and caulked it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child into it and placed it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile.(4) And his sister stationed herself at a distance, to learn what would befall him.(5) The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe in the Nile, while her maidens walked along the Nile. She spied the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to fetch it.(6) When she opened it, she saw that it was a child, a boy crying. She took pity on it and said, “This must be a Hebrew child.”(7) Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get you a Hebrew nurse to suckle the child for you?”(8) And Pharaoh’s daughter answered, “Yes.” So the girl went and called the child’s mother.(9) And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will pay your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed it.(10) When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, who made him her son. She named him Moses, explaining, “I drew him out of the water.”

(20) Amram took into his [household] as wife his father’s sister Jochebed, and she bore him Aaron and Moses; and the span of Amram’s life was 137 years.

(1) וילך איש מבית לוי, “A distinguished man from the house of Levi went, etc.” our sages comment that this means that Amram followed the advice of his daughter. (He had divorced his wife so as not to condemn any new born children to death. Thereupon his daughter accused him of being worse than Pharaoh who only murdered the male babies. Thereupon, Amram reconsidered and remarried his wife). .... Nachmanides writes that the reason why the Torah tells us of the apparently trivial fact that Amram went to get a wife, is only to show us that Amram publicly demonstrated that he was unconcerned about Pharaoh’s decree, and that he married precisely in order to sire children. The word וילך is used by the Torah again and again when it introduces any act performed by someone which demonstrates special initiative by that person. ... The Torah did not bother to mention Amram’s name at this point, nor that of Yocheved, as the important thing was only to report whose offspring they were. The Torah was anxious at this stage to reveal the birth of the Israelites’ saviour. (Rashi claims that Yocheved had miraculously regained her youth at the time, basing himself on the fact that the Torah did not write that Amram married “Yocheved, a daughter of Levi.” [which would not necessarily have meant that Yocheved was a real daughter, but a descendant, Ed.] Instead, the Torah wrote that he married a daughter of Levi, which means that the woman in question was 130 years old at least when she gave birth to Moses.