Exodus 12:4

4 If the family is too small for a lamb, then share it with a close neighbor, depending on the number of persons involved. Be mindful of how much each person will eat.

Exodus 12:4 Meaning and Commentary

Exodus 12:4

And if the household be too little for the lamb
That they cannot eat it up at once; let him and his neighbour next unto his house take it according to the
number of the souls;
which Josephus ^F5 says were never fewer than ten, and were often twenty, but no man might feast alone; with which agrees the Jewish canon ^F6,

``they do not kill the passover lamb for a single person, nor even for a society consisting of one hundred, that cannot eat the quantity of an olive:''

every man according to his eating shall make your count for the lamb:
that is, a man must reckon up how many he has in his own house to eat of the lamb, and what their appetites be, by which he will he able to judge whether he can dispense with a lamb himself, or whether he must take in some of his neighbours, and how many, so as to eat up the whole lamb, for, for such persons the lamb was to be slain. The rule is,

``if a man slays it for those that do not eat of it, or for those that are not counted, for the uncircumcised, and the unclean, it was wrong, and not allowed of ^F7.''

The taking in his neighbours may respect the call of the Gentiles to partake of Christ with the Jews, see ( Ephesians 3:5 Ephesians 3:6 ) .

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FOOTNOTES:

F5 De Bello Jud. l. 6. c. 9. sect. 3.
F6 Misn. Pesach. c. 8. sect. 7.
F7 lbid. c. 5. sect. 3.

Exodus 12:4 In-Context

2 "This month is to be the first month of the year for you.

3 Address the whole community of Israel; tell them that on the tenth of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one lamb to a house.

4 If the family is too small for a lamb, then share it with a close neighbor, depending on the number of persons involved. Be mindful of how much each person will eat.

5 Your lamb must be a healthy male, one year old; you can select it from either the sheep or the goats.

6 Keep it penned until the fourteenth day of this month and then slaughter it - the entire community of Israel will do this - at dusk.