Exodus 12:4

Summary

The verse provides a contingency rule for the Passover lamb: if a household is too small to consume an entire animal, it must join with the nearest neighboring household. The number of participants is to be calculated according to each person's capacity to eat.

Key words

• yim'At ("it will be too small", H4591) — qal imperfect, describing a conditional future/ongoing state introduced by 'im ("if", H0518A); the smallness of the bayit ("household", H1004M) is the triggering condition of the whole clause.
• miHyot ("from being", H1961 + H9006) — a qal infinitive governed by the preposition mi ("for/from"), forming an idiomatic construction "too small from being [enough] for a lamb", i.e., insufficient in relation to consuming the animal.
• laKach ("he will take", H3947G) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain begun with the conditional clause; grammatically it advances the action once the condition is met: the householder "takes" the neighbor into the arrangement.
• mikhSat nefaShot ("the number of persons", H4373 + H5315J) — a construct chain literally "number of souls/people", used as the measuring unit for dividing the lamb.
• ta.Khosu ("you will calculate/estimate", H3699) — qal imperfect, second person plural, addressing the community directly and shifting from third-person narrative to a collective instruction for apportioning the animal.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a conditional structure: ve'im ("and if") introduces the protasis — the household being yim'At ("too small") miHyot miSeh ("for being from a lamb/for a lamb"), i.e., insufficient relative to one animal. The apodosis follows with a sequential perfect, laKach ("he will take"), a verb form that continues a narrative sequence rather than standing as an independent statement — grammatically linking this provision to the preceding instructions about selecting the lamb (v.3).

The subject of laKach is emphasized by the independent pronoun Hu' ("he", H1931) placed after the verb, then joined by u-shekhenO ("and his neighbor", H7934 + H9023), specified further as ha-qaRov 'el beitO ("the one near to his house", H7138 + H1004M + H9023). The measuring principle is given by the construct chain mikhSat nefaShot ("number of persons") and refined by 'ish leFi 'okhlO ("each according to the mouth of his eating", H0376I + H6310K + H0400 + H9023) — a Hebrew idiom denoting individual eating capacity rather than a fixed portion. The final verb, ta.Khosu ("you will calculate", H3699), shifts grammatically to a plural imperative-like imperfect addressing the community, instructing them to compute the allocation 'al ha-Seh ("concerning the lamb", H5921A + H7716).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders Seh ("lamb/sheep", H7716) as πρόβατον ("sheep"), and expands miHyot miSeh into a fuller explanatory clause (ὥστε μὴ εἶναι ἱκανοὺς εἰς πρόβατον, "so as not to be sufficient for a sheep"), making explicit what the Hebrew infinitive construction leaves more compact. The Vulgate similarly interprets miHyot as sufficere possit ad vescendum agnum ("might suffice for eating the lamb"), adding the verb "to eat" (vescendum) not present as a separate lexical item in the Hebrew, which relies instead on the idiom leFi 'okhlO later in the verse for the concept of eating capacity.