12:48 “When a foreigner lives 1 with you and wants to observe the Passover to the Lord, all his males must be circumcised, 2 and then he may approach and observe it, and he will be like one who is born in the land 3 – but no uncircumcised person may eat of it.
16:16 “This is what 4 the Lord has commanded: 5 ‘Each person is to gather 6 from it what he can eat, an omer 7 per person 8 according to the number 9 of your people; 10 each one will pick it up 11 for whoever lives 12 in his tent.’”
1 tn Both the participle “foreigner” and the verb “lives” are from the verb גּוּר (gur), which means “to sojourn, to dwell as an alien.” This reference is to a foreigner who settles in the land. He is the protected foreigner; when he comes to another area where he does not have his clan to protect him, he must come under the protection of the Law, or the people. If the “resident alien” is circumcised, he may participate in the Passover (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 104).
2 tn The infinitive absolute functions as the finite verb here, and “every male” could be either the object or the subject (see GKC 347 §113.gg and 387 §121.a).
3 tn אֶזְרָח (’ezrakh) refers to the native-born individual, the native Israelite as opposed to the “stranger, alien” (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 104); see also W. F. Albright, Archaeology and the Religion of Israel, 127, 210.
4 tn Heb “the thing that.”
5 tn The perfect tense could be taken as a definite past with Moses now reporting it. In this case a very recent past. But in declaring the word from Yahweh it could be instantaneous, and receive a present tense translation – “here and now he commands you.”
6 tn The form is the plural imperative: “Gather [you] each man according to his eating.”
7 sn The omer is an amount mentioned only in this chapter, and its size is unknown, except by comparison with the ephah (v. 36). A number of recent English versions approximate the omer as “two quarts” (cf. NCV, CEV, NLT); TEV “two litres.”
8 tn Heb “for a head.”
9 tn The word “number” is an accusative that defines more precisely how much was to be gathered (see GKC 374 §118.h).
10 tn Traditionally “souls.”
11 tn Heb “will take.”
12 tn “lives” has been supplied.