Exodus 12:4

4 A household may be too small to eat a whole animal. That household and the one next door can share one animal. Choose your animal based on the number of people and what each person can 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 will be the very first month of the year for you.

3 Tell the whole community of Israel: On the tenth [day] of this month each man must take a lamb or a young goat for his family--one animal per household.

4 A household may be too small to eat a whole animal. That household and the one next door can share one animal. Choose your animal based on the number of people and what each person can eat.

5 Your animal must be a one-year-old male that has no defects. You may choose a lamb or a young goat.

6 Take care of it until the fourteenth [day] of this month. "Then at dusk, all the assembled people from the community of Israel must slaughter their animals.