This verse presents many difficulties, so the entire verse and the context should be carefully studied before translating. And if the household is too small for a lamb means “if there are not enough people in a household to eat a whole lamb.” (See verse 3 for the meaning of lamb.) Then a man and his neighbor refers to the head of the household and his Israelite neighbor. The assumption here is that the head of the household would go to his Israelite neighbor, not his Egyptian neighbor. Shall take is singular in form, but it includes both family heads. It is understood that what they shall take, or what “they may share,” is the lamb, or “animal” (Good News Translation).

His neighbor next to his house is ambiguous. It may be understood geographically as “his next-door neighbor” (Good News Translation). But the following phrase, according to the number of persons, suggests that it can mean “the closest neighbor in the number of persons” (Childs). That is, a near-by family would be selected on the basis of family size, not simply because they are “next door.”

The next phrase, according to what each can eat, adds to the difficulty, but it is part of a separate clause, you shall make your count for the lamb. Literally the entire clause reads “a man according to his food you will reckon unto the lamb.” (The you is plural.) Although the problem arises from the number of people in one household being too few, it is not clear whether the “reckoning” means to count the cost for proper sharing of expenses or to count the number of people. (The verb occurs only here in the Hebrew Bible.) New Revised Standard Version favors the latter, “the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat it.” But Revised English Bible favors the former, “They are to share the cost according to the amount each person eats.”

This verse obviously attempts to explain a rather complex regulation. Few of the English translations are clear because they follow the form of the Hebrew too closely. Good News Translation, however, seems to be the clearest, for to “share an animal” may refer to the cost as well as the number of people and the amount each one eats. This is what the context suggests. If, however, a translator decides to use New Revised Standard Version‘s interpretation above, another way to express this is “the animal must be large enough for everyone to have some meat” (similarly Contemporary English Version).

Quoted with permission from Osborn, Noel D. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Exodus. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1999. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .