Exo 12:4 | NET2full | STEP | If any household is too small for a lamb , the man and his next - door neighbor are to take a lamb according to the number of people —you will make your count for the lamb according to how much each one can eat .

Exodus 12:4

4 If any household is too small ^{▼▼sn Later Judaism ruled that “too small” meant fewer than ten (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 88).} for a lamb, ^{▼▼tn The clause uses the comparative min (מִן) construction: יִמְעַט הַבַּיִת מִהְיֹת מִשֶּׁה (yimʿat habbayit miheyot 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.} the man ^{▼▼tn Heb “he and his neighbor”; the referent (the man) has been specified in the translation for clarity.} and his next-door neighbor ^{▼▼tn Heb “who is near to his house.”} are to take ^{▼▼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.”} a lamb according to the number of people—you will make your count for the lamb according to how much each one can eat. ^{▼▼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.}