Exodus 12:4

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Exodus 12:4 sn Later Judaism ruled that “too small” meant fewer than ten (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 88).
2. Exodus 12:4 tn The clause uses the comparative min (מִן) construction: יִמְעַט הַבַּיִת מִהְיֹת מִשֶּׁה (yimʿat habbayit mih^eyot misseh, “the house is small from being from a lamb,” or “too small for a lamb”). It clearly means that if there were not enough people in the household to have a lamb by themselves, they should join with another family. For the use of the comparative, see GKC 430 §133.c.
3. Exodus 12:4 tn Heb “he and his neighbor”; the referent (the man) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
4. Exodus 12:4 tn Heb “who is near to his house.”
5. Exodus 12:4 tn The construction uses a perfect tense with a vav (ו) consecutive after a conditional clause: “if the household is too small…then he and his neighbor will take.”
6. Exodus 12:4 tn Heb “[every] man according to his eating.”sn The reference is normally taken to mean whatever each person could eat. B. Jacob (Exodus, 299) suggests, however, that the reference may not be to each individual person’s appetite, but to each family. Each man who is the head of a household was to determine how much his family could eat, and this in turn would determine how many families shared the lamb.