Exodus 12:3

12:3 Tell the whole community of Israel, ‘In the tenth day of this month they each ¹  must take a lamb ²  for themselves according to their families ³  – a lamb for each household. ⁴ 

Exodus 12:5

12:5 Your lamb must be ⁵  perfect, ⁶  a male, one year old; ⁷  you may take ⁸  it from the sheep or from the goats.

Exodus 34:19

34:19 “Every firstborn of the womb ⁹  belongs to me, even every firstborn ¹⁰  of your cattle that is a male, ¹¹  whether ox or sheep.

Exodus 12:4

12:4 If any household is too small ¹²  for a lamb, ¹³  the man ¹⁴  and his next-door neighbor ¹⁵  are to take ¹⁶  a lamb according to the number of people – you will make your count for the lamb according to how much each one can eat. ¹⁷ 

Exodus 22:1

Laws about Property

22:1 ¹⁸ (21:37) ¹⁹  “If a man steals an ox or a sheep and kills it or sells it, he must pay back ²⁰  five head of cattle for the ox, and four sheep for the one sheep. ²¹ 

Exodus 13:13

13:13 Every firstling ²²  of a donkey you must redeem ²³  with a lamb, and if you do not redeem it, then you must break its neck. ²⁴  Every firstborn of ²⁵  your sons you must redeem.

Exodus 22:4

22:4 If the stolen item should in fact be found ²⁶  alive in his possession, ²⁷  whether it be an ox or a donkey or a sheep, he must pay back double. ²⁸ 

Exodus 34:20

34:20 Now the firstling ²⁹  of a donkey you may redeem with a lamb, but if you do not redeem it, then break its neck. ³⁰  You must redeem all the firstborn of your sons.

“No one will appear before me empty-handed. ³¹ 

Exodus 22:10

22:10 If a man gives his neighbor a donkey or an ox or a sheep or any beast to keep, and it dies or is hurt ³²  or is carried away ³³  without anyone seeing it, ³⁴ 

Exodus 22:9

22:9 In all cases of illegal possessions, ³⁵  whether for an ox, a donkey, a sheep, a garment, or any kind of lost item, about which someone says ‘This belongs to me,’ ³⁶  the matter of the two of them will come before the judges, ³⁷  and the one whom ³⁸  the judges declare guilty ³⁹  must repay double to his neighbor.

[12:3]  ¹ tn Heb “and they will take for them a man a lamb.” This is clearly a distributive, or individualizing, use of “man.”

[12:3]  ² tn The שֶּׂה (seh) is a single head from the flock, or smaller cattle, which would include both sheep and goats.

[12:3]  ³ tn Heb “according to the house of their fathers.” The expression “house of the father” is a common expression for a family.

[12:3]  ⁴ tn Heb “house” (also at the beginning of the following verse).

[12:5]  ⁵ tn The construction has: “[The] lamb…will be to you.” This may be interpreted as a possessive use of the lamed, meaning, “[the] lamb…you have” (your lamb) for the Passover. In the context instructing the people to take an animal for this festival, the idea is that the one they select, their animal, must meet these qualifications.

[12:5]  ⁶ tn The Hebrew word תָּמִים (tamim) means “perfect” or “whole” or “complete” in the sense of not having blemishes and diseases – no physical defects. The rules for sacrificial animals applied here (see Lev 22:19-21; Deut 17:1).

[12:5]  ⁷ tn The idiom says “a son of a year” (בֶּן־שָׁנָה, ben shanah), meaning a “yearling” or “one year old” (see GKC 418 §128.v).

[12:5]  ⁸ tn Because a choice is being given in this last clause, the imperfect tense nuance of permission should be used. They must have a perfect animal, but it may be a sheep or a goat. The verb’s object “it” is supplied from the context.

[34:19]  ⁹ tn Heb “everything that opens the womb.”

[34:19]  ¹⁰ tn Here too: everything that “opens [the womb].”

[34:19]  ¹¹ tn The verb basically means “that drops a male.” The verb is feminine, referring to the cattle.

[12:4]  ¹³ sn Later Judaism ruled that “too small” meant fewer than ten (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 88).

[12:4]  ¹⁴ 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.

[12:4]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “he and his neighbor”; the referent (the man) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[12:4]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “who is near to his house.”

[12:4]  ¹⁷ 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.”

[12:4]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “[every] man according to his eating.”

[22:1]  ¹⁷ sn The next section of laws concerns property rights. These laws protected property from thieves and oppressors, but also set limits to retribution. The message could be: God’s laws demand that the guilty make restitution for their crimes against property and that the innocent be exonerated.

[22:1]  ¹⁸ sn Beginning with 22:1, the verse numbers through 22:31 in the English Bible differ from the verse numbers in the Hebrew text (BHS), with 22:1 ET = 21:37 HT, 22:2 ET = 22:1 HT, etc., through 22:31 ET = 22:30 HT. Thus in the English Bible ch. 22 has 31 verses, while in the Hebrew Bible it has 30 verses, with the one extra verse attached to ch. 21 in the Hebrew Bible.

[22:1]  ¹⁹ tn The imperfect tense here has the nuance of obligatory imperfect – he must pay back.

[22:1]  ²⁰ tn בָּקַר (baqar) and צֹאן (tso’n) are the categories to which the ox and the sheep belonged, so that the criminal had some latitude in paying back animals.

[13:13]  ²¹ tn Heb “and every opener [of a womb].”

[13:13]  ²² tn The verb תִּפְדֶּה (tifdeh), the instructional imperfect, refers to the idea of redemption by paying a cost. This word is used regularly of redeeming a person, or an animal, from death or servitude (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 109).

[13:13]  ²³ tn The conditional clause uses an imperfect tense; this is followed by a perfect tense with the vav consecutive providing the obligation or instruction. The owner might not redeem the donkey, but if he did not, he could not keep it, he had to kill it by breaking its neck (so either a lamb for it, or the donkey itself). The donkey could not be killed by shedding blood because that would make it a sacrifice, and that was not possible with this kind of animal. See G. Brin, “The Firstling of Unclean Animals,” JQR 68 (1977): 1-15.

[13:13]  ²⁴ tn Heb “and every firstborn of man among your sons.” The addition of “man” is clearly meant to distinguish firstborn humans from animals.

[22:4]  ²⁵ tn The construction uses a Niphal infinitive absolute and a Niphal imperfect: if it should indeed be found. Gesenius says that in such conditional clauses the infinitive absolute has less emphasis, but instead emphasizes the condition on which some consequence depends (see GKC 342-43 §113.o).

[22:4]  ²⁶ tn Heb “in his hand.”

[22:4]  ²⁷ sn He must pay back one for what he took, and then one for the penalty – his loss as he was inflicting a loss on someone else.

[34:20]  ²⁹ tn Heb “and the one that opens [the womb of] the donkey.”

[34:20]  ³⁰ sn See G. Brin, “The Firstling of Unclean Animals,” JQR 68 (1971): 1-15.

[34:20]  ³¹ tn The form is the adverb “empty.”

[22:10]  ³³ tn The form is a Niphal participle from the verb “to break” – “is broken,” which means harmed, maimed, or hurt in any way.

[22:10]  ³⁴ tn This verb is frequently used with the meaning “to take captive.” The idea here then is that raiders or robbers have carried off the animal.

[22:10]  ³⁵ tn Heb “there is no one seeing.”

[22:9]  ³⁷ tn Heb “concerning every kind [thing] of trespass.”

[22:9]  ³⁸ tn The text simply has “this is it” (הוּא זֶה, hu’ zeh).

[22:9]  ³⁹ tn Again, or “God.”

[22:9]  ⁴⁰ tn This kind of clause Gesenius calls an independent relative clause – it does not depend on a governing substantive but itself expresses a substantival idea (GKC 445-46 §138.e).

[22:9]  ⁴¹ tn The verb means “to be guilty” in Qal; in Hiphil it would have a declarative sense, because a causative sense would not possibly fit.