The Levi family tree, from Jacob’s third son to the priests of Aaron

Levi was the third son that Leah bore to Jacob. She named him with the words, “Now this time will my husband be joined unto me”, and the name is drawn from the word for joined.^1,14

Genesis remembers Levi for one act. When Shechem took their sister Dinah, Simeon and Levi came on the city with their swords and slew all the males, Hamor and Shechem among them. Jacob told them they had made him odious to the people of the land.² On his deathbed he cursed their anger and said, “I will divide them in Jacob, And scatter them in Israel.”⁴ Numbers 3 later sets the whole tribe before Aaron the priest to minister to him and to keep the service of the tabernacle, and the Levi family tree follows the families that did that work.⁸

Genesis 46:11 names the three sons of Levi who went down to Egypt, Gershon, Kohath and Merari.³ Exodus 6 repeats them in birth order and gives their sons. Gershon had Libni and Shimei. Kohath had Amram, Izhar, Hebron and Uzziel. Merari had Mahli and Mushi.⁶ Numbers 3:17-20 lists the same names and calls them the families of the Levites by their fathers’ houses.⁸

Exodus 6 also gives three ages. Levi lived a hundred thirty and seven years, Kohath a hundred thirty and three, and Amram a hundred thirty and seven.⁶ Numbers 26 turns the sons and grandsons into clans, the Gershonites, Kohathites and Merarites, with the Libnites, Hebronites, Mahlites, Mushites and Korahites under them.¹¹ The Jewish Encyclopedia notes that the Kohathites carried the holiest things of the sanctuary on their shoulders, and that Moses, Aaron and Samuel were all counted among them.¹⁶ The Levi family tree colours each of the three clans in its own shade.

Exodus 2 opens the story of Moses with a man of the house of Levi who took a daughter of Levi to wife, and names neither of them.⁵ Exodus 6:20 gives the names. Amram took Jochebed, his father’s sister, to wife, and she bore him Aaron and Moses.⁶ Numbers 26:59 adds that she was the daughter of Levi, born to him in Egypt, and names a third child, Miriam their sister.¹¹

Jochebed is therefore a daughter of Levi and an aunt of her own husband. The Levi family tree draws her on Amram’s row so that the marriage line stays level, and her line from Levi runs down two rows past her brothers. Aaron was the elder of the two brothers, and Moses, whose own family is drawn in the Moses family tree, was the younger.^6,15

Aaron married Elisheba, the daughter of Amminadab and the sister of Nahshon, and she bore him Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar.⁶ Amminadab and Nahshon belong to the tribe of Judah, so this marriage joins the Levi family tree to the Judah family tree, where Elisheba appears again as Nahshon’s sister. The Jewish Encyclopedia calls Aaron the first and typical high priest.¹⁵

Numbers 3 calls the four sons the priests that were anointed. Leviticus 10 tells how Nadab and Abihu offered strange fire before the LORD, and fire came forth from before the LORD and devoured them.⁷ Numbers 3:4 adds that they had no children, so Eleazar and Ithamar ministered in the priest’s office in the sight of their father.⁸ Korah, a cousin of Aaron through Izhar, later rose against Moses and Aaron with Dathan, Abiram and On.⁹

Eleazar took one of the daughters of Putiel to wife, and she bore him Phinehas.⁶ Exodus does not give her own name, so the Levi family tree calls her the daughter of Putiel. At Shittim, when a plague struck Israel for the worship of the Baal of Peor, Phinehas took a spear and the plague was stayed. Numbers 25 gives him and his seed after him the covenant of an everlasting priesthood.¹⁰ The Hebrew Bible never records his death, so the chart gives him no death mark.

1 Chronicles carries the line from Phinehas on for twenty more generations, to Jehozadak, who went into captivity under Nebuchadnezzar. The list sits at 1 Chronicles 5:27-41 in the Hebrew numbering that Sefaria follows and at 1 Chronicles 6:1-15 in the King James Version, with the same names in both.^12,13 The Levi family tree stops at Phinehas, and the table below gives the rest of the line.