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 18:22
Context18:22 They will judge 7 the people under normal circumstances, 8 and every difficult case 9 they will bring to you, but every small case 10 they themselves will judge, so that 11 you may make it easier for yourself, 12 and they will bear the burden 13 with you.
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 The form is the perfect tense with the vav (ו) consecutive, making it equivalent to the imperfect of instruction in the preceding verse.
8 tn Heb “in every time,” meaning “in all normal cases” or “under normal circumstances.” The same phrase occurs in v. 26.
9 tn Heb “great thing.”
10 tn Heb “thing.”
11 tn The vav here shows the result or the purpose of the instructions given.
12 tn The expression וְהָקֵל מֵעָלֶיךָ (vÿhaqel me’aleykha) means literally “and make it light off yourself.” The word plays against the word for “heavy” used earlier – since it was a heavy or burdensome task, Moses must lighten the load.
13 tn Here “the burden” has been supplied.
