Discovery BoxExodus 12:4 
Context12:4 If any household is too small 1 for a lamb, 2 the man 3 and his next-door neighbor 4 are to take 5 a lamb according to the number of people – you will make your count for the lamb according to how much each one can eat. 6
Exodus 16:16
Context16:16 “This is what 7 the Lord has commanded: 8 ‘Each person is to gather 9 from it what he can eat, an omer 10 per person 11 according to the number 12 of your people; 13 each one will pick it up 14 for whoever lives 15 in his tent.’”
1 sn Later Judaism ruled that “too small” meant fewer than ten (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 88).
2 tn The clause uses the comparative min (מִן) construction: יִמְעַט הַבַּיִת מִהְיֹת מִשֶּׂה (yim’at habbayit mihyot miseh, “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 tn Heb “he and his neighbor”; the referent (the man) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
4 tn Heb “who is near to his house.”
5 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 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.
7 tn Heb “the thing that.”
8 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.”
9 tn The form is the plural imperative: “Gather [you] each man according to his eating.”
10 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.”
11 tn Heb “for a head.”
12 tn The word “number” is an accusative that defines more precisely how much was to be gathered (see GKC 374 §118.h).
13 tn Traditionally “souls.”
14 tn Heb “will take.”
15 tn “lives” has been supplied.
