וילך איש מבית לוי. דרשו רבותינו שהלך אחר עצת בתו. ור' אברהם אמר כי בערים רבים היו יושבים ישראל וזאת האשה היתה ישבת בעיר אחרת. וכתב הרמב"ן ומה צורך שיזכיר הכתוב ההליכה ועל דעתי בעבור שלא חשש בגזירת פרעה ולקח לו אשה להוליד בנים אמר הכתוב כן כי כל המזדרז לעשות ענין חדש אומר כן כמו וילך ראובן וישכב וילך ויקח את גומר בת דבלתים. ולא הזכיר הכתוב לא שם האיש ולא שם האשה כי היה צריך לייחש אביהם וכל משפחתם ועתה קיצר הפסוק עד לידת מושיע ואז ייחסו וגם שאר השבטים בעבורו: 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). Ibn Ezra comments that the Israelites at that time lived in many different cities of Egypt, and that the wife Amram married lived in another city, so that he had to go there to ask her to marry him. 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. Examples are found in Genesis 30,14 and 35,22 where the Torah describes initiative displayed by Reuven. Similar use of the word וילך occurs in Genesis 22,13, Samuel II 21,12, Kings II 5,5, and Hoseah 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.
ויקח את בת לוי. דרשו רבותינו שהם לקוחים שניים ועל דרך הפשט היה תחלת נישואין ואין מוקדם ומאוחר בפרשה והיה זה קודם גזירת פרעה וילדה אהרן ומרים ואח"כ גזר פרעה כל הבן הילוד ולא הזכיר הכתוב לידת אהרן ומרים כי לא היה בלידתם דבר חידוש. פירש"י שחזרה לנערותיה ודרי' מדלא כתיב את יוכבד בת לוי אלא קרי לה בת סתם שנעשית כבת: ויקח את בת לוי, “he married Levi’s daughter.” According to our sages this was a second marriage for both, but to the same spouses. According to the plain text we speak about the first marriage of this couple. However, seeing that the Torah has never felt constricted to report events in their historical sequence, we are in order to understand this wedding as having occurred prior to Pharaoh’s decrees. During those years Yocheved bore Moses and Miriam for Amram. Their births were not reported as this was nothing out of the ordinary. 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.