several families had to unite, in order to consume one lamb, they were to estimate how much each person would be likely to eat. Consequently more than two families might unite for this purpose, when they consisted simply of the father and mother and little children. A later custom fixed ten as the number of persons to each paschal lamb; and Jonathan has interpolated this number into the text of his Targum.
Verse 5
The kind of lamb: תּמים integer, uninjured, without bodily fault, like all the sacrifices (Lev 22:19-20); a male like the burnt-offerings (Lev 1:3, Lev 1:11); שׁנה בּן one year old (ἐνιαύσιος, lxx). This does not mean “standing in the first year, viz., from the eighth day of its life to the termination of the first year” (Rabb. Cler., etc.), a rule which applied to the other sacrifices only (Exo 22:29; Lev 22:27). The opinion expressed by Ewald and others, that oxen were also admitted at a later period, is quite erroneous, and cannot be proved from Deu 16:2, or 2Ch 30:24 and 2Ch 35:7. As the lamb was intended as a sacrifice (Exo 12:27), the characteristics were significant. Freedom from blemish and injury not only befitted the sacredness of the purpose to which they were devoted, but was a symbol of the moral integrity of the person represented by the sacrifice. It was to be a male, as taking the place of the male first-born of Israel; and a year old, because it was not till then that it reached the full, fresh vigour of its life. “Ye shall take it out from the sheep or from the goats:” i.e.,, as Theodoret explains it, “He who has a sheep, let him slay it; and he who has no sheep, let him take a goat.” Later custom restricted the choice to the lamb alone; though even in the time of Josiah kids were still used as well (2Ch 25:7).
Verse 6
“And it shall be to you for preservation (ye shall keep it) until the fourteenth day, and then...slay it at sunset.” Among the reasons commonly assigned for the instruction to choose the lamb on the 10th, and keep it till the 14th, which Jonathan and Rashi supposed to refer to the Passover in Egypt alone, there is an element of truth in the one given most fully by Fagius, “that the sight of the lamb might furnish an occasion for conversation respecting their deliverance from Egypt,...and the mercy of God, who had so graciously looked upon them;” but this hardly serves to explain the interval of exactly four days. Hoffmann supposes it to refer to the four doroth (Gen 15:16),
