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Temurah 15 for kids: One Offering or Two?

תמורה ט״ו

🐐 This daf asks what happens when a sin offering is lost and another is set aside in its place. It also asks how rules about an individual’s offering differ from rules about a community’s offering.

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Stories from Temurah 15

Words to know

Rashi and Tosafot on Temurah 15 in simple English

Rashi on Temurah 15a, in English Tab translation (15)
  1. Samuel reigned alone for ten years — Without Saul; therefore the tenth year is not counted among the forty years. David reigned thirty-seven years before Absalom’s rebellion. Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi explained elsewhere that Samuel’s tenth year was counted toward Samuel’s own period of leadership. Scripture does not state this explicitly; it follows from the chronology. From Eli’s death, when Samuel’s leadership began, to Absalom’s rebellion were forty-nine years: thirteen for Samuel and Saul, and thirty-six for David. Eli died when the Ark was captured. It remained in Philistine territory for seven months and was then taken to Kiriath-jearim; David brought it from there after becoming king over all Israel. The Ark’s twenty years at Kiriath-jearim include David’s seven years in Hebron, eleven years of Samuel’s rule alone, and two years when Saul and Samuel were both alive. Samuel died only four months before Saul: afterward David fled to Achish and stayed in Philistine territory for four months, until Saul died. Thus there were thirteen years from Eli’s death to David’s accession, followed by thirty-six years before Absalom’s rebellion. Subtract the nine years before Israel asked for a king, and the period from that request through the year of the rebellion is forty years. Seder Olam likewise places the rebellion in David’s thirty-sixth year. The reading here is: ten years Samuel reigned alone, one year Saul reigned alone, and thirty-six years for David. I have added my own explanation to this. Another calculation begins with Samuel’s birth: Eli became judge in the year Samuel’s mother prayed for a child and judged for forty years. Subtract Samuel’s year in the womb, and Samuel was thirty-nine when Eli died and his own leadership began. Samuel lived fifty-two years—two years until he was weaned, followed by the fifty years implied by ‘forever’—leaving thirteen years of leadership. These include Saul’s two years, since Samuel and Saul died in the same year.
  2. Whose owners achieved atonement — The sin offering was lost, its owners achieved atonement with another, and the first was then found.
  3. And a communal sin offering — The community achieved atonement with another offering.
  4. Is not left to die — The rule that certain sin offerings must die is a halakha transmitted to Moses from Sinai. The first tanna holds that it was taught for an individual’s offering, not a community’s.
  5. Shall be left to die — Rabbi Yehuda holds that the rule was taught for a communal offering too.
  6. Rabbi Shimon said: Just as we found — The established rule lists five sin offerings that must die: one whose owners died, one whose owners achieved atonement with another, one whose year passed, an offspring of a sin offering, and a substitute for one. Three cannot occur with communal offerings: a community has no female sin offering that could give birth, a communal offering cannot produce a substitute, and a community does not die.
  7. So too, one whose owners achieved atonement and one whose year passed — Although these can occur with communal offerings, the rule that they must die was not taught for them.
  8. What does ‘he shall bring [it] for a sin offering’ teach? — Why does Leviticus 4:32 say, ‘If he brings a lamb as his offering for a sin offering’? It could have said, ‘If his offering for a sin offering is a lamb.’
  9. He shall bring it — This refers to the end of the verse: ‘He shall bring it, a female without blemish.’
  10. Rabbi Shimon says: It shall be left to die — It is an individual’s sin offering whose owner achieved atonement with another.
  11. But didn’t Rabbi Yehuda say it shall be left to die? — In the mishna he says so even of a communal offering, and all the more so of an individual’s.
  12. But didn’t Rabbi Shimon say — In the mishna he includes an offering whose owner achieved atonement with another among the five sin offerings left to die, and says this rule applies to an individual’s offering.
  13. Lost when the replacement was set aside — The first offering was found before atonement was achieved with the second. In that case Rabbi Yehuda says it grazes, because he holds that the rule requiring it to die applies only if it is found after atonement. The mishna’s ruling that it dies concerns an offering still lost when atonement was achieved with the second.
  14. Both cases concern one lost when the replacement was set aside — In both, the first offering was found before atonement with the second. Rabbi Yehuda states the mishna’s ruling according to Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, who says it dies even then. In the baraita, Rabbi Yehuda states that it grazes according to the Rabbis, who say it dies only if found after its owners achieved atonement.
  15. But is there anyone who says this? — The question challenges the mishna.
Tosafot on Temurah 15a, in English Tab translation (1)
  1. And thirty-six years that David reigned — This is the correct reading. It gives forty years from the request for a king through Absalom’s rebellion, counting Samuel’s tenth year, when the people requested a king. How do we know that Samuel judged Israel for thirteen years? The Ark was captured when Eli died, and Samuel took office immediately afterward. The Ark remained in Philistine territory for seven months and was then brought to Kiriath-jearim. Scripture says it remained there twenty years; David brought it to Jerusalem after his seven years in Hebron. Subtracting those seven years leaves thirteen years from Eli’s death to David’s accession in Hebron. Samuel ruled alone for ten of them. For one year Samuel and Saul both ruled: Saul was anointed during that year, so it was not a full year of his reign. Saul ruled another two years while Samuel was still alive. Samuel died only four months before Saul, as shown by the account of David’s four months in Philistine territory after Samuel’s death. Thus thirteen years belong to Samuel and Saul, and thirty-six to David before the rebellion: forty-nine altogether. Subtract the nine years before the request for a king, and forty remain, including the year of the rebellion. This raises a difficulty: Seder Olam places five years of David’s reign after the rebellion—three years of famine, one year in which the land was surveyed, and one year in which he arranged the Temple divisions. On this reading, the rebellion’s year must have been the famine’s first year. Some texts instead read ‘thirty-seven years that David reigned.’ On that reading, the famine began a year before the rebellion, and Samuel’s tenth year is not counted among the forty: three years of Saul and thirty-seven of David make forty. But Rabbi Nehorai says in Seder Olam that the rebellion occurred in David’s thirty-fifth year; by his reckoning, there are not forty years from the request for a king to the rebellion. Some explain Samuel’s thirteen years from his lifespan: he was fifty-two when he died. Hannah brought him to the sanctuary after weaning him, presumably at age two, and the ‘forever’ for which he remained there means fifty years, the span of a Jubilee. Hannah’s prayer was on the day Eli took office, and Eli judged Israel for forty years. Subtract a year for Samuel’s gestation, leaving thirty-nine years of Eli’s tenure after Samuel’s conception. The remaining thirteen years of Samuel’s life began when Eli died and Samuel took office. As the Sages say, before Eli’s sun set, Samuel’s sun had risen. Samuel therefore began to rule at age thirty-nine and ruled for thirteen years.
Rashi on Temurah 15b, in English Tab translation (25)
  1. Similarly — It is not clear what earlier statement this refers to.
  2. Can a sin offering be brought as a burnt offering? — The verse says, “Twelve goats for a sin offering; all this was a burnt offering.”
  3. And that sin offering, too, was not eaten — Rabbi Yosei said that they brought twelve goats, one for each tribe that had worshipped idols in Zedekiah’s time. For communal idolatry, the Torah requires a bull as a burnt offering and a goat as a sin offering (Numbers 15). Those goats are burned outside the camp, like the bull brought for a communal error. The sages derive this from the wording about that bull in Leviticus 4:20, which also extends its laws to the goats brought for idolatry.
  4. And yet it was sacrificed — Although its owners had died during the seventy years in Babylonia.
  5. Your sons shall be — That is, sons take their fathers’ place, so the sin offering could be sacrificed.
  6. This is why a community does not die — Festival and New Moon goats are sin offerings purchased with half-shekels donated in Adar. Some donors may have died before the offerings were brought, yet the offerings are sacrificed although those donors had a share in them.
  7. When they sacrificed them — The goats for idolatry brought in Ezra’s time.
  8. They sacrificed them for the living — For those who had worshipped idols in Zedekiah’s time and were still alive.
  9. And many shouted for joy — Those who had not seen the First Temple were now rejoicing.
  10. But perhaps those people — Perhaps the survivors were a minority of Israel, who should each have brought an individual goat rather than a goat for each tribe. If communal offerings were brought, perhaps they relied on those who had died, showing that a communal sin offering does not die.
  11. The sound of the people weeping — This shows that many were weeping amid the rejoicing; the weepers belonged to the earlier generation.
  12. But they had sinned intentionally — In Zedekiah’s time.
  13. This also stands to reason — It must have been a provisional ruling for that occasion.
  14. Granted, twelve bulls — As burnt offerings, along with twelve goats as sin offerings.
  15. For the twelve tribes — Numbers 15 prescribes a bull as a burnt offering and a goat as a sin offering for communal idolatry.
  16. Who had everything in him — Torah learning, fear of sin, and acts of kindness.
  17. What was forgotten was forgotten — That is, the teachings that had been forgotten.
  18. And what they knew — The teachings they had not forgotten, they knew as Moses had known them.
  19. Their understanding had diminished — They could not recover the forgotten rulings through legal reasoning. They disagreed about them and followed the majority.
  20. What they had learned — The teachings they had not forgotten, they knew as Moses had known them.
  21. A flaw — At first, the Gemara assumes this means a moral failing, absent from the “clusters” who led Israel.
  22. Groaning — Crying out in pain, as in the Aramaic translation of Judges 5 concerning Sisera’s mother.
  23. An armed robber — Small livestock cannot be kept from grazing in other people’s fields.
  24. And the rabbis — Rabbi Yehuda bar Ilai and Rabbi Yehuda ben Bava.
  25. They lived generations after Yosef ben Yo’ezer — Yet no sin was found in them. Evidently they, too, had no moral flaw.
Tosafot on Temurah 15b, in English Tab translation (7)
  1. Similarly, Rabbi Yosei said — Rashi explains that it is unclear what “similarly” refers to. This teaching appears in the Sifra after its interpretation of “He shall make the second a burnt offering” (Leviticus 5:10): Just as a burnt offering is not eaten, so this sin offering is not eaten.
  2. For the idolatry they committed in the days of Zedekiah — This follows the view that, for communal idolatry, each tribe brings a bull and a goat. That is why they brought twelve goats as sin offerings, one for each tribe.
  3. We might have thought that one who holds that a sin offering whose owners have atoned must die also holds that one whose owners have died must die — But does this not conflict with the mishna? Everyone agrees that the rule about owners who died applies to an individual, not a community, yet they disagree about owners who have atoned. The distinction is that the mishna plainly concerns a case in which all the owners died and none remained. Here, we might have thought that some owners were still alive, which is why the offering could be brought.
  4. Yet here the offering was brought — Rashba asks: How is this a case of an offering whose owners died? Elsewhere, that means the sin offering was designated before its owners died, whereas here nothing had been designated. Rabbeinu Natan’el answers: If an offering can be brought for them even without prior designation, then the dead can receive atonement. All the more so, if they designated an offering before dying, their children should be able to bring it for them. The discussion in the first chapter of Horayot (6a) also treats this case as evidence that the dead can receive atonement.
  5. Yet it was brought — One might ask: Does this not also challenge the view that the animal must be left to graze? No view says it may be sacrificed. The answer is that if it need not die, it can also be fit for sacrifice. Similarly, Yoma 50a says of the bull, “even its blood,” and asks why it is not a sin offering whose owner died. It answers that the bull also atones for the community. Thus, where the offering is not left to die, it can be fit for sacrifice.
  6. Their hearts were diminished — They lacked the resolve to recover what they had forgotten; this is the point of disagreement.
  7. They had learned thoroughly — What remained to them, which they had not forgotten, they knew as precisely as Moses did.

Sources

Kid summary and story cards written by Tab from the William Davidson Edition English (Sefaria, CC BY-NC 4.0).

Tab translation (machine-assisted) of Rashi and Tosafot, from the Vilna Edition Hebrew (public domain) on Sefaria. May contain mistakes.

In the app, the Gemara text comes from Sefaria (William Davidson Edition, CC BY-NC 4.0; Hebrew/Aramaic Vilna Edition). Rashi and Tosafot Hebrew: Vilna Edition (public domain) via Sefaria.

Also spelled: Temura 15.