Between Moshe’s initial failure to win over the Israelites to his leadership and the beginning of the Plagues, the Torah interrupts with – genealogy? And an incomplete one at that, listing only the sons of Reuven and Shim’on, and three generations of Levi. It seems to be setting up the yichus of Aharon and Moshe, because the verse immediately after the genealogic information reads, “The same Aharon and Moshe to whom Hashem said, ‘Take the children of Israel out of Egypt.’”
Buried in the genealogy, however, is foreshadowing of several later stories that occur during the wilderness years, including Korach and Pinchas. But the line that caught my attention concerns a figure whose big moment, according to the Gemara, is coming very soon: Nachshon.
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