Monday, March 12, 2012

Temurah 24 – The Conundrum of Surplus Funds From Sin Offering

If one had money designated to buy a sin offering, the sin offering was brought, but some funds still remained, what are we to do with it? On the one hand, we saw multiple cases where a left over sin offering is allowed to die, and the leftover money is thrown into the Dead Sea. On the other hand, that was true for complete offerings and bundles of money, but here we have leftovers. Yehoyada the Kohen proved that the leftover money can be used to bring burned offerings of the congregation. His proof was based on the double language of “guilt, guilt.” Since the second “guilt” was not needed, he applied it to sin offerings.

Since Yehoyada's proof was generally accepted and admired, why was there a need to formulate a similar ruling we just learned? – One might have thought that it applied only to leftovers of one sacrifice, and here we see that you can even mix the money of two.

A loophole to circumvent Kohen's rights in a firstborn animal: if one has in his flock an animal that is pregnant with her first offspring, he can says, “If it is pregnant with a male, let this male be consecrated as a burned offering.” There are also further combinations of his statements and possible multiple births of offspring of different genders.

Art: Richard Ansdell - A Ewe with Lambs and a Heron Beside a Loch

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