Parasha: Tzav · Aliyah: Second (Gevurah)

והכהן המשיח תחתיו מבניו, and one of his sons, the priest who will be anointed in his stead, etc. The sages in Menachot 51 explain that this verse teaches that if a High Priest has died and no successor has as yet been appointed, that one of his sons must offer the daily meal-offering which is mandatory for the High Priest. They derive this הלכה from the words מבניו תחתיו, "one of his sons in his stead." The same sages use the letter ם in the word מבניו for a different exegetical purpose. The Talmud on that folio quotes a Baraitha according to which the word בניו means that the High Priest's sons enjoy the status of ordinary priests; to the query that may be the Torah intended them to have the status of High Priests (pl)? The sages point to the words והכהן המשיח תחתיו מבניו as proof that only one of the sons may be anointed as High Priest in place of their father. It seems clear that this conclusion is derived from the word מבניו, i.e. from amongst his sons, not all his sons.

On this subject the Talmud Horiot 11 adds that even a High Priest who is the son of a High priest needs to undergo anointing with the oil of anointing. They derive this from the words: והכהן המשיח תחתיו מבניו; if anointment of the son were not required all the Torah would have had to write was והכהן מתחתיו מבניו the extraneous word המשיח teaches that even if the High Priest's own son is his successor he has to be anointed. This seems difficult. The word המשיח is essential to teach us that the sons who up until then were only ordinary priests, as per We could answer this query by saying that we did not need the word המשיח to enable us to allow the sons to offer the meal-offering in the absence of a newly appointed High Priest, for why else would the Torah write two verses dealing with the ordinary priest offering a meal-offering. It is clear therefore that on the first occasion the Torah mentions the meal-offering brought by an ordinary priest that the regular priest is meant, whereas on the second occasion the Torah refers to an ordinary priest who happens to be the son of a High Priest. The word המשיח did not have to be mentioned unless the Torah wished us to derive an additional lesson from that word. The Talmud concluded therefore that the word teaches that even if a High Priest is succeeded by his son he needs to be anointed for his new office.

There remains the problem why the Torah had to write תחתיו מבניו, an inverted way of saying מבניו תחתיו, "from amongst his sons as his replacement." Perhaps the Torah was especially interested in the word תחתיו appearing next to the person whom he replaced in order for the Talmud in Menachot to be able to arrive at the conclusion that one of the High Priest's sons must offer the meal-offering normally offered by the High Priest pending appointment of a new High Priest. The whole verse may then be understood as follows: והכהן המשיח תחתיו יעשה, "and the priest who will be anointed in his place will carry out (the functions of that Office);" however, if a replacement has not yet been appointed, מבניו יעשה, "one of his sons may carry it out." Had the Torah written הכהן המשיח מבניו תחתיו, the meaning would have been that only if the son had already been appointed in place of his father, i.e. had been appointed or was considered fit to be appointed, would he be obligated to offer the meal-offering his father used to offer; seeing that the Torah reversed the words מבניו תחתיו and wrote תחתיו מבניו יעשה, we derive the law that any of the High Priest's heirs may bring the meal-offering. Rabbi Shimon disagrees and holds that as long as no replacement for the High Priest has been appointed the meal-offering in question has to be paid for by the public purse (instead of by the High Priest or his estate). The significance of the sequence of the words תחתיו מבניו then is that no one other than the son of the deceased High Priest is entitled to replace him. After having given this explanation I have found that Torat Kohanim already preceded me in explaining these Baraithot in the same spirit.

אשם הוא, it is a guilt-offering. Rabbi Eliezer and the other rabbis disagree in Torat Kohanim whether the extraneous word הוא is intended to teach that if this offering was not slaughtered on the northern side of the altar that it is invalidated. Rabbi Eliezer holds that the word הוא means that if the guilt-offering was slaughtered while the priest entertained the wrong thoughts i.e. assumed that the animal in question was a different kind of offering, it is invalid. According to his reasoning, the words אשם הוא emphasise the need for the guilt-offering mentioned in verse 1 of our chapter to have been slaughtered for that purpose in order to be acceptable. We find in Zevachim 10 that Rabbi Yehoshua challenged Rabbi Eliezer's exegesis and that thereupon Rabbi Eliezer retracted and derived his ruling that the אשם must be slaughtered as such in order to be valid from the words כחטאת כאשם in verse 7 of our chapter. Considering this, we must ask what Rabbi Eliezer learns from the extraneous word הוא? Perhaps if the word הוא had not been written here I would have made the comparison made in Zevachim 11 between the guilt-offering and the sin-offering described in verse 7 as not applying to the need to perform סמיכה on the guilt-offering just as on the sin-offering, but I would have applied it to the need to slaughter either offering with the right intent in order for it to be acceptable. In order to prevent us from making such an error, the Torah wrote the word הוא next to the word אשם to inform us that this word tells us something about the אשם itself. The Torah wrote the words כחטאת כאשם in verse 7 in order to tell us that both these offerings require סמיכה as something mandatory. The other rabbis, the ones who disagreed with Rabbi Eliezer who used the word הוא to invalidate the guilt-offering unless it had been slaughtered on the northern side of the altar, understand that word to refer back to verse 2 where the principle of slaughtering the guilt-offering in the same place as the burnt-offering has first been mentioned. Repeating this by means of the word הוא indicates that the requirement is mandatory. Although one could challenge these rabbis with similar queries as the ones used by Rabbi Yehoshua to get Rabbi Eliezer to retract, the fact that they did not arrive at a new הלכה by dint of a סברה, a process of reasoning, but applied a rule applicable to other sacrifices also to the guilt-offering by their methodology, it is absolutely acceptable that the word הוא was intended by the Torah to make the site of the slaughtering mandatory. This is all the more so since in the case of the burnt-offering the Torah had spelled this law out in so many words. The contribution of those rabbis is that if we had only had verse 1 in our chapter, I would have reasoned that while it is a desired requirement, failure to slaughter the guilt-offering on the northern side of the altar would not have invalidated it.

וכל מנחה אשר תאפה בתנור, and every meal-offering which is baked in the oven, etc. The Torah mentions five separate categories of meal-offerings to exclude five matters. 1) The sons of Aaron do not divide the meal-offering according to the formula employed when animal offerings are shared out, i.e. that portions of one offering may be traded off against portions of another offering; rather every priest of the group performing service on that day receives his share of each of the meal-offerings presented on that day. 2) Bird-offerings are not shared out in the same way as the meal-offerings. One could have argued that the bird-offerings and the meal-offerings were both offerings presented by the poor and the very poor respectively. This factor does not have a bearing on the method employed in sharing out the meat of the bird-offerings, however. 3) The distribution of the meat of bird-offerings did not parallel that of the offerings consisting of four-legged animals, even though in both cases their blood is sprinkled on the altar. 4) The criteria applicable to the distribution of the parts of one kind of meal-offering are not identical to those of the sharing out of another kind of meal-offering, even though they all consist of flour of some kind. 5) Meal-offerings consisting of baked goods baked in one kind of pan or another kind are not shared out according to the same criteria as other meal-offerings prepared in a similar manner when these meal-offerings served different purposes.

Although these five exclusions all concern different kinds of meal-offerings, the exegesis from which we derived these halachic differences is based on what is called אם אינו ענין, i.e. that if the Torah records certain information which is superfluous in its context, such information may be applied to supplement information lacking in a different context. I have seen that Maimonides in chapter 10, ruling 15 of his Ma-asseh Hakorbanot explains the exclusions in our two verses along different lines (other than Torat Kohanim which is similar to our author). He bases his exegesis on the fact that the Torah did not include the five kinds of meal-offerings mentioned here in the section dealing with מנחת סלת in 6,7-11 but records it in a different context. This is remarkable seeing that in the case of the meal-offerings which are baked as well as in the meal-offering consisting of fine flour mixed with oil and frankincense the Torah speaks of the offering belonging to the officiating priest. Maimonides reasons that we could have made a case for sharing out the meal-offering consisting of fine flour according to the same criteria as those applicable to some other meal-offering but we do not do so. It is clear from Maimonides' reasoning that he employs the words לכל בני אהרון "to all the priests" in 7,10 as the basis for his exegesis. This is not what we learned in the Baraitha (Torat Kohanim ).

Maimonides also stresses the fact that the laws of the meal-offering do not all appear in a single paragraph. This teaches that unless the Torah had separated the laws of one kind of meal-offering (the מנחת סלת) which was not baked from the five categories mentioned in our chapter all of which are baked, we could not have used these verses exegetically and we would not have arrived at the conclusions derived by Torat Kohanim. Perhaps Maimonides thought that the fact that the Torah artificially separated the legislation pertaining to the offering of the meal-offerings is proof that it did not want us to assume that the formula of trading off by the priest of parts of one meal-offering against parts of another type of meal-offering is acceptable. Having arrived at this principle, it is applied to all the meal-offerings. You may find proof in the fact that in the case of מנחת מרחשת and מנחת מחבת the Torah does not mention a word about all the priests sharing in it equally. All that is mentioned is that priests not officiating on that day are not entitled to share in it. [the Torah phrases it positively, saying: "it belongs to the priest who offers it which means to the group of priests officiating on that day. Ed.] Whence does Maimonides know then that a meal-offering offered in a pan may not be traded off against a meal-offering offered in a stewing-pan seeing not a word is said about how these meal-offerings are to be shared out? Actually, the five exclusions we cited earlier as the basis of our exegesis are only of the type known as אסמכתא, a "lean-to." This type of exegesis is not binding but serves as a reminder of halachot with which we are already familiar. The principal exegetical tool is the fact that the Torah saw fit not to record all six examples of meal-offerings in the same paragraph.

We are now left with the problem of why the Torah gave many details repeatedly when all it had to write was that "every meal-offering belongs to the officiating priest, and is to be shared by all the priests officiating on that day." Perhaps -in view of the fact that the Torah already entered into details of different kinds of baked meal-offerings- the Torah was afraid that we would apply totally different criteria to the מנחת סלת and others which were not baked. We find, for instance, in Menachot 63 that the Talmud explains the words וכל נעשה במרחשת ועל מחבת in 7,9 to mean that these meal-offerings and the rules pertaining to them are governed by the type of container they are offered up in and not so much by their composition. The practical significance of this becomes evident when a person vows to bring a meal-offering and he merely identifies the kind of meal-offering he undertakes to bring by naming the vessel it is to be brought in. For instance, he said: "I am obligated to a certain kind of baking pan" [one of the ones which existed in the Temple. Ed]. According to the school of Hillel such a vow is valid seeing the kind of pan he mentioned is a sacred vessel and can be used for the meal-offering and the Torah wrote: "anything prepared in either of these kinds of pans, etc." According to the school of Shammai it is doubtful what this person had in mind. His "offering" would need to remain untouched until the coming of Elijah the prpohet who would resolve our doubts about its validity. Rabbi Yossi the son of Rabbi Yehudah holds that all these meal-offerings are separate categories. Therefore, one may not bring less than a minimal quantity of a meal-offering על המחבת and add to it less than a minimal quantity of a meal-offering במרחשת in order to combine these quantities into a single meal-offering of minimal acceptable quantity. The words אשר תאפה תנור, teach that one cannot combine part of a meal-offering baked on a griddle with part of a meal-offering baked in an oven. The only extraneous words which have not yet been explained exegetically are the ones in verse 10 seeing what is written there is also a duplication.

Perhaps Rabbi Yossi son of Rabbi Yehudah who holds that the words מאפה תנור mean two types of meal-offerings derived his ruling from the fact that the Torah employed the word כל both in verse 9 and in verse 10. As a result we have a double duplication. First of all there was no need for the extra verse; secondly, if you already had the extra verse, the word כל did not need to appear in both verses. This is why Rabbi Yossi is careful to mention the source of his ruling, i.e. וכל מנחה,…וכל נעשה במרחשת, ובל מנחה בלולה. He adds: "Just as the word וכל in verse 10 clearly refers to two separate meal-offerings, i.e. one containing a great deal of oil and one a dry one, so the word וכל in the previous verse also refers to two different categories of meal-offering. It follows from the above that if the Torah had only written the words מנחה בלולה, or כל מנחה חרבה, I would not have had an exegetical tool with which to derive the various halachot we have derived from the repeated use by the Torah of the word וכל. In fact, one could have argued that if the Torah had written כל מנחה חרבה this would furnish proof that the word כל applied to a single kind of meal-offering, [in spite of the Torah using the word כל meaning each or every. Ed.] and that when the Torah spoke about this kind of meal-offering without using the word כל such as in Leviticus 2,4: מנחה מאפה תנור (Leviticus 2,4), it also referred to only a single category of offering. The Torah had to write all the verses which appear to contain some duplication in order to teach us the various halachot we just described.