Yoma 14 – What does the High Priest do for seven days?

Normally the High Priest is not doing regular services. However, on Yom Kippur, he will be performing them all by himself, so for the seven days of sequestration, he practices these services daily: he throws the blood of the sacrifices, burns the incense, prepares the lamps, and offers the head and the hind leg of the daily offering.

Whoever wrote down this ruling, it was not Rabbi Akiva. Why not? Because it would contradict his other ruling: for all seven days, they would sprinkle the High Priest with the ashes of the Red Heifer to remove any possible impurity of the dead he might have contracted. According to Rabbi Akiva, this sprinkling has an amazing property: it purifies only the impure ones, but if someone is pure in the first place, then the ashes make him impure until the end of the day. Thus, according to Rabbi Akiva, the High Priest would be impure every day and unable to perform any service.

From where does Rabbi Akiva derive this most strange fact? – From the words of the Torah, “And the pure will sprinkle upon the impure.” The Torah could have said “upon him,” why did it have to again emphasize that he was impure? – To tell us that the impure becomes pure, but the pure becomes impure. The Sages say that it would be totally illogical, and as far as the words “on the impure” – they learn a different law from it. But how does Rabbi Akiva answer the logic argument? He says, “Even Solomon could not understand it, as he said, “I wanted to become wise, but it is beyond me.”

Art: The Judgement of Solomon by Sir Peter Paul Rubens