“And Moshe was 80 years old, and Aharon was 83 years old, when they spoke with Pharaoh” (Sh’mos 7:7). My 6th grade son came home last week with the following “bumba question of the week” from his rebbe: If Moshe was 80 before the plagues started, the “judgment” against Egypt lasted for a year (Eduyos 2:10), and the nation spent 40 years in the desert, when Moshe died he should have been 121 (80+1+40), not 120 (which is how old the Torah says he was when he died, see D’varim 34:7). Marvin Stiefel posed this question a few months ago to his email list, providing the sources for each of the numbers. Although I told my son what I thought the answer was, along with another possibility, he seemed excited when I said that perhaps I’d write about it this week (maybe because then he could just show this piece to his rebbe instead of having to remember the answers I gave him). After I mentioned this question to my chavrusa, R’ Yitzchok Steinfeld, he pointed out that the Aruch L’ner (Rosh Hashanah 2b) and Rav Chaim Kanievsky, sh’lita (Ta’ama d’Kra, Vayelech) both ask the question, leaving it unanswered. (As we shall see, Chasam Sofer discusses it as well.)
This question could also apply to Aharon, as he was 83 before the plagues and 123 when he died in the 40th year in the desert (Bamidbar 33:39). However, he died more than eight months before the 40th anniversary of the exodus from Egypt (see Bamidbar 33:38), so it’s certainly possible, even likely, that he would have been 124 had he made it to the end of the 40th year. [I haven’t found a source for when Aharon’s birthday was; Aruch L’ner assumes that, like Moshe, he died on his birthday, but Abarbanel (Bamidbar 33:39) assumes that his birthday was sometime between Av and Nisan, but not the 1st of Av (when he died).] Moshe, on the other hand, was born on the 7th of Adar and died on the 7th of Adar (Kiddushin 38a; see also Rashi on D’varim 31:2), so we can’t attribute the missing year to his birthday being between the calendar day of his death and the day that the nation left Egypt/entered Israel.
One possibility, suggested by Rabbi Michael Taubus in response to Mr. Stiefel’s email, is that the expression “80 years old” doesn’t mean that his 80th birthday had already past, but that he was in his 80th year (after his 79th birthday, before his 80th birthday). To back up his suggestion, Rabbi Taubes referenced Seder HaDoros, which lists the year Moshe was born as 2368, the year of the exodus as 2448, and the year of the burning bush and when the plagues started (including when Aharon’s staff swallowed the magicians’ staffs, which occurred right after we are told that Moshe was 80) as 2447, which was when Moshe was 79 years old (having passed his 79th birthday). [It should be noted that the Torah refers to an animal that is not yet one year old as “ben shana” (see Rashi on Sh’mos 12:5), the same terminology used when giving human ages.] Mr. Stiefel brought a further proof for Rabbi Taubes’ suggestion, quoting Ibn Ezra on B’reishis 10:21, where he says explicitly that when the Torah provides ages it includes incomplete years, meaning that Moshe would be referred to as “80” the entire year after his 79th birthday. Based on this, the math would really be 79+1+40=120. (Had Moshe lived one day past his birthday, he would have been listed as having died at 121 rather than 120.) Abarbanel (Bamidbar 33:39) seems to be working with this assumption, and Chasam Sofer (Chasam Sofer al HaTorah, Sh’mos 7:7) suggests it as well, although when he discusses it elsewhere (Sh’uT Chasam Sofer 6:29, quoted in Likutim and in a footnote to Chasam Sofer al HaTorah) he doesn’t seem completely comfortable with it.
If this was how ages are to be understood, we would expect this to be consistent throughout the Torah. For example, when the Torah says Avraham was 100 years old when Yitzchok was born (B’reishis 21:5), it would mean he was in his 100th year, but had only celebrated his 99th birthday (unless Yitzchok was born on Avraham’s birthday, in which case it was the day he turned 100 years old). When the Torah says that in order to be counted for the census one had to be “from twenty years old and up” (Bamidbar 1:3) it should therefore mean “past his 19th birthday,” not “past his 20th birthday.” However, if this is true, when the Levi’im were counted “from one month and up” (Bamidbar 3:15; see also 3:40), it would mean “from before they are a month old and older,” or from the moment they were born. Similarly, when setting the values for donations, those “from one month until five years” (Vayikra 27:6) would mean from birth until after their fifth birthday. Why call it “from one month” if it really means “from the time they are born”? Even though we aren’t fully confident that an infant will survive until they have lived for a month, if the term “ben chodesh” is parallel to how we are understanding “ben esrim,” it would refer to infants who hadn’t yet lived for a month, not those who have.
Because of this, Chasam Sofer (in his responsa) differentiates between when an age is given and when an age range is given (i.e. including the expressions “from” and “and up”), with the latter referring to that number birthday and the former referring to the year after the previous birthday. When Moshe says “today I am 120” (D’varim 31:2), Chasam Sofer understands it to fit into the latter category, presumably because saying “today is my birthday” means that the previous year has ended. In D’varim 34:7 there is no qualifier; perhaps having already specified that his 120th year was complete is enough. In any case, since both of those statements refer to his actual birthday, he hadn’t yet started his 121st year, so there is no need to fit it into only one category.
The common explanation for “ben” [insert number here] is how many birthdays have been celebrated, not what year of life the person is in; I’m not sure that this question (and others like it, such as the ones Ibn Ezra is addressing) is reason enough to change how we understand this very common expression, which is used throughout both biblical and rabbinical literature.
Elsewhere (D’rashos I, page 117a), Chasam Sofer suggests another possibility, based on whether ages are counted by birthdays or by calendar years. If everyone’s “age” changes at the beginning of the calendar year (Tishray; see Rashi on Sh’mos 30:16), Moshe would have lived for 121 years when he died (80+1+40), but was considered 120 until the next Tishray (which he didn’t live to see). Although it was not yet Tishray when the Egyptians’ “year of judgment” started either, Chasam Sofer suggests that before the Torah was given, ages were counted from birthday to birthday, not from Tishray to Tishray. Therefore, when it says that Moshe was “80” when he spoke to Pharaoh, it meant that his 80th birthday had passed, but when it gives his age when he died, it’s using the “new” method of counting, i.e. how many Tishrays had passed, and there had only been 120. As we shall see, it is not clear that it wasn’t already Tishray (or later) when the Torah says Moshe was 80 years old, but this won’t affect this approach because one Tishray would be “lost” (his 81st Tishray) when the methodology of keeping track of how old people were changed. Nevertheless, it is unclear that a Tishray should be disregarded (when counting ages) rather than considering them a year older a few months earlier (which would mean that Moshe turned 121 in Tishray 2448). Additionally, some (see Ramban on Sh’mos 30:12) are not comfortable with counting ages from Tishray rather than their birthday; this is especially true since the “accounting method” would have changed without there being any indication that how we calculate ages had changed.
This question started because of the Talmudic statement that the judgment of Egypt lasted a year, a statement that appears in Seder Olam (3) as well. Since the ages of Moshe and Aharon were given before the plagues started, the assumption was that this was when the year of judgment started too. However, Seder Olam (5) says explicitly that the “year of judgment” started from the burning bush (see Rabbeinu Bachye on Sh’mos 10:5, who says that it started when Pharaoh was warned that G-d would kill his firstborn if he didn’t listen). After returning to Midyan to get his family and say goodbye to his father-in-law (Sh’mos 4:18-20), Moshe met Aharon and went to Pharaoh the first time (Sh’mos 5:1). This caused things to get worse (Sh’mos 5:5-9), after which Moshe left Egypt and “returned to G-d” to complain about it (5:22-23). Sh’mos Rabbah (5:19) tells us that Moshe returned to Midyan for six months (other versions have it as three months), which means that when Moshe returned (again) from Midyan, it was well into the “year of judgment” (after Tishray if he was gone for six months). It was at this point that the Torah tells us that Moshe was 80 and Aharon was 123.
The wording of the “snapshot in time” where these ages were given is “when they spoke to Pharaoh.” Although Or Hachayim says that this refers to when they first started speaking to Pharaoh, the syntax (present tense rather than past tense) indicates that it was the ongoing conversation with Pharaoh that is being referred to. It doesn’t say that this is how old they were when G-d sent them to Pharaoh (see Netziv), but how old they were when they were speaking with him. The previous verse, which is in the past tense, refers to the entire process, not just the beginning of the process (“and Moshe and Aharon did all that G-d commanded them”); the plagues, Pharaoh not responding to them, and the Children of Israel leaving Egypt (Sh’mos 7:3-5) are all included in what Moshe and Aharon “did.” It would therefore seem that the expression “when they were speaking with Pharaoh” refers to the entire process, up to and including when the nation was freed from slavery.
According to Ramban (Sh’mos 10:4), the last three plagues occurred in the month of Nissan, with the sixth plague occurring in Adar (Moshe’s birth month). Since a number of the plagues (and, it could be argued, the main ones, as they brought about the redemption) came after Moshe’s 80th birthday, when the Torah describes his age during the redemption process, including when the goal was achieved (the goal having been mentioned right before his age was given), he is said to have been 80 years old. [This works with Seder HaDoros’ chronology as well, as the burning bush (et al) did occur in 2447.] Moshe turned 80 during the period of time that he spoke with Pharaoh, and (almost) 40 years after that conversation ended, he turned 120 (80+40=120).
