Commento su Levitico 1:15

והקריבו [AND THE PRIEST] SHALL OFFER IT — It — even a single bird he may offer (not necessarily more than one, as might be assumed from the plural תורים and בני יונה) (Sifra, Vayikra Dibbura d'Nedavah, Section 7 1; Zevachim 65a).

AND THE PRIEST SHALL BRING IT UNTO THE ALTAR. This “bringing” means bringing it up onto the altar, signifying that the priest is to bring up the bird onto the altar and nip off its head there, as the nipping off may only be done on top of the altar.¹⁷²Zebachim 65a. It is for this reason that the Rabbis interpreted:¹⁷²Zebachim 65a. “And the priest shall bring it … Could you possibly think that a non-priest could come near the altar? If so, why does it say the priest … shall nip off? It is to teach us that the nipping off be done [not with an instrument but] only by the priest himself.” “And he shall nip off … and cause it to ascend in fumes … and the blood thereof shall be wrung out. Is it possible to say that after he has burnt it, he should squeeze the blood out? But [the order of the wording] is to teach us that just as the burning of the head is to be done separately [as is indicated here in the verse, and he shall nip off its head, and cause it to ascend in fumes], and that of the body is to be done separately [as is stated further on in Verse 17: and he shall cleave it … and cause it to ascend in fumes], so also the nipping off has to be done in this way, the head separately and the body separately. The plain meaning of the verse, however, is that the wording is to be inverted: and he shall nip off and cause it to ascend in fumes, and before the burning its blood shall have been wrung out.” This is Rashi’s language.
Now it is impossible to say [that the order of the verse can be explained to mean] that he should nip off its head and burn it, and afterwards wring the blood of the body on the wall of the altar and then burn the body, since no limbs of any offering may ever be burnt [on the altar] before the sprinkling of the blood, the principle for it is the blood that maketh atonement by reason of the life¹⁷³Further, 17:11. Ramban’s intention is to defend Rashi’s explanation. At first sight, one could suggest an alternative explanation, which would leave the words of the verse in the correct order, namely that the nipping off and burning mentioned in the verse refer to the head, and the wringing of the blood can nonetheless be done subsequently because it refers to the body’s blood. Rashi, however, was compelled to invert the word-order because this suggested explanation is impossible, as explained by Ramban. applying to all offerings. Therefore the Rabbis interpreted the verse [to mean] that Scripture intended only to liken the nipping off to the burning, so that in both cases the head should be treated by itself and the body by itself. The plain sense of the verse, however, is that “he should nip off its head in order to burn it on the altar,” thus teaching that the nipping off should be done in order to burn the head [separately, and not dispose of it otherwise], just as he will burn the body, concerning which He said, and the priest shall cause it to ascend in fumes,¹⁷⁴Verse 17. for such is Scriptures’ way of speaking about all offerings, as I have explained in connection with the severance into pieces of the burnt-offering.¹⁶³Verse 6. However, Scripture states here, and the priest shall cause it to ascend in fumes,¹⁷⁴Verse 17. and did not say “and he shall cause all to ascend” [as it said above in Verse 9, in the case of the burnt-offering of the herd], because [here in the case of the burnt-offering of the fowl] the burning thereof was done in two separate stages: first he burnt the head, and then he removed the crop [from the body], and cleft it by the wings, and then he burnt the body, as we have been taught in Tractate Zebachim.¹⁷²Zebachim 65a.

ומלק, our sages explain exactly how this was done. (compare Chulin 8) They base their exegesis on the wording of ומלק את ראשו instead of ומלק אותו, which would have been the parallel of the words ושחט אותו, which the Torah uses to describe the killing of the four-legged sacrificial animal. Dunash [Dunash ben Labrat, a tenth century grammarian born in Fez, disciple of Rabbi Saadyah Gaon. Ed.] explains that a further proof of the correctness of our sages’ exegesis is that they had been eye witnesses of the manner in which the birds’ throat and spine would be snipped with the fingernail of the priest, etc.

והקריבו הכהן אל המזבח, “ the priest will present it to the altar.” This “הקרבה” consists of the priest raising the bird onto the altar before nipping its head.

Even one pigeon. Otherwise, Scripture should have written: “The Kohein shall bring,” why is it written, “He shall bring it”? Rather, it teaches that if he comes to bring one pigeon he may do so. [You might ask:] It is written above, “He shall bring from turtledoves...” which implies two! [The answer is:] That [perhaps it means that this] is the best way to fulfill the mitzvah but not necessary after the fact. Alternatively, “from turtledoves” refers to the species of turtledoves, but [he may bring] even one.

ונמצה דמו על קיר המזבח, “and its blood shall be drained out on the side of the altar.” Seeing we speak about a minute amount of blood, no special bowl had been used in first collecting it. Had it first been collected in a bowl there would not have been enough left over to sprinkle it, hence it was squeezed out against the side of the altar.

ומלק, “and he will pinch off;” the priest himself, i.e. with his own hands, on the top of the altar; he was not to use a tool such as a knife. This is in consonance with the commandment that in building the altar, no iron tool, sword, knife, was to be used, as the altar is designed to prolong man’s life, whereas the knife or sword is used to shorten man’s life. [What makes sense when building an altar makes even better sense in the procedures to be performed on the altar. Ed.] Just as the act of pinching mentioned in chapter5,8, was performed at the neck, so here too the Torah refers to the bird’s neck being pinched off. (Sifra there) The head is not to be completely severed, however.

הכהן … ומלק THE PRIEST SHALL … NIP OFF [ITS HEAD] — The nipping of the bird’s head must not be done with an instrument but by the priest’s very self:) he nips with his finger-nail close by the nape, cuts right through the neck-bone until he comes to the “organs” (the wind pipe and the gullet) and cuts them through too (Sifra, Vayikra Dibbura d'Nedavah, Section 7 3; Zevachim 65a).

ונמצה, this term is appropriate when speaking of something soft, as we know from Isaiah 51,17 את קובעת כוס התרעלה שתית מצית, “who have drunks the dregs of the cup,” or Psalms 75,9 אך שמריה ימצו, “Only its dregs will they drain.”

ומלק, “and he will nip,” והקטיר, “and cause it to go up in smoke,” ונמצה דמו, “and squeeze out its blood.” It is impossible to explain this verse in the sequence the procedures are described, i.e. to cause the head of the bird to go up in smoke and to squeeze out its blood after that, followed by the burning up of the rest of its body. We find no instance in which atonement is effected through burning up the body parts before the blood has been utilized in that process. Therefore, our sages (Zevachim 65) interpreted this verse as only drawing a conceptual link, הקש, between the performance of the nipping of the bird’s head and the procedure known as הקטרה, burning it up so that it goes up in smoke. Just as the burning up of the head of the bird and the rest of its body are two independent procedures, so the nipping of the head and the squeezing out of the blood from the rest of the body are two separate independent procedures. According to the plain meaning of the text, we have to understand that the nipping of the bird’s head and the burning up of it on the altar, precede one another, as the priest had already burned up the rest of the bird’s body. The reason why the Torah writes here: (verse 17) והקטיר אותו הכהן, [where the word הכהן appears completely redundant, Ed.] instead of writing והקטיר את הכל, as the Torah did when describing the parallel procedure for four legged beasts (verse 9), is because in this instance the parts that were to be burned up were in fact not all burned up at the same time. After having burned up the head, the priest proceeded to remove the bird’s crop with its feathers, for instance.

With the kohein’s own body. Otherwise, why does it say “the kohein”; [even without specifying a kohein,] the nipping must obviously be done by a kohein, for a non-kohein may not bring sacrifices upon the altar. If not for the verse, I might have thought that nipping must be done with a knife, [and I would have derived it] by means of a kal vachomer from slaughtering, which can be done by a non-kohein and yet it requires a knife, so much more so nipping, which is invalid for a non-kohein — is it not logical that it should require a knife? (Zevachim 65a).

ראשו והקטיר, just as find that the delivering the head to be burned on the altar was performed by the priest’s hands, no other instrument or container, and the bird’s body was placed on the altar by the priest’s hands, so the “slaughtering” of the two vital tubes that lead to the head was also performed by the priest’s hands. This had to be done in this way in order to prevent the head being accidentally severed from its body by a knife.

ונמצה דמו AND THE BLOOD THEREOF SHALL BE WRUNG OUT — The word ונמצה is connected in meaning with (Proverbs 30:33) “the pressing out (מיץ) of wrath”; (Isaiah 16:4) “for extortion (המץ) is at an end). — He presses the place where the neck has been cut (בית השחיטה) against the wall and the blood thus drains itself out) and runs down the wall (cf. Sifra, Vayikra Dibbura d'Nedavah, Section 7 7; Zevachim 64b).

ונמצה דמו, “having pressed out its blood.” As opposed to the burnt offerings of the ruminants, no mention is made here of the blood from the area where the slaughtering had been performed being caught up in a special pan. The reason is that the quantity of blood involved was too miniscule to be usefully accumulated within such a pan. On the contrary, this blood would stick to the walls of the pan, and there would not be any blood left to sprinkle on the wall of the altar

Near the nape. This is derived from the turtledoves and young pigeons spoken about at the end of the parshah, where it is explicitly written (5:8): “opposite of its neck,” i.e., [the part of the neck] that looks upon the nape of the neck, [i.e., behind the throat], but not the nape itself, which is [the back of the head,] on the level of the face and behind it, as it says (Yirmeyahu 2:27): “For they turned to Me their nape and not their face.”

ונמצה דמו, “and its blood shall be drained;” all of its blood. How could this be accomplished? The priest would hold the bird’s body by it skin to ensure it would not be cut in half completely; in this way the blood would seep out from either side of where the priest held the skin in his hands. We have a tradition that anything that disqualifies a four legged animal from becoming an acceptable sacrifice, does so also if its counterpart on the bird is defective, i.e. improperly treated by the priest. On the other hand, anything that does not invalidate the sacrifice of a fourlegged animal, for instance the skin, does not invalidate the bird offering either if it had been treated incorrectly.

ומלק … והקטיר …ונמצה AND HE SHALL NIP OFF … AND CAUSE IT TO ASCEND IN FUMES … AND [THE BLOOD] SHALL BE WRUNG OUT — Is it possible to say so? Since he has burnt it can he squeeze the blood out?! But the wording is intended to suggest the following: How is it with the burning of the sacrifice? The head is separate and the body is separate (since it states here ומלק את ראשו והקטיר, and in v. 17 it is enjoined והקטיר אתו i. e. the body; vv. 16—17 speaking of the rites performed on the body)! So, too, the nipping has to be thus (i. e. has to have the effect of severing the head from the body so that it may be burnt apart from the body; the מליקה accordingly denotes here complete severance, whilst in 5:8 this is forbidden. The translation therefore is: and he shall nip off the head so that he may burn it on the altar) (Sifra, Vayikra Dibbura d'Nedavah, Section 7 5; Zevachim 65a). According to the literal sense of the verse, however, the wording is inverted: he shall nip off [the head] and burn it, and before the burning the blood shall have been pressed out already (ונמצה has therefore a future-perfect meaning: “and its blood shall have been pressed out”).

After he burns it he squeezes the blood [out the blood]. Meaning: First, he must squeeze out the blood, for the limbs of an offering are brought to be burnt only after the blood is taken out. Thus, it should say “He nips, the blood is squeezed out,” and then, “he burns it.” Rather, the word “burns” is inserted between them [i.e., nipping and squeezing] to make a comparison to “nipping”: [Just as regarding burning, the head is by itself and the body is by itself, so too nipping, the head is by itself and the body is by itself, i.e., the head is completely severed by the nipping. What is the source that the burning of the head and body are separate?] Concerning the burning of its body it is written (17): “[The kohein] shall burnt it on the altar,” this speaks [of the burning] of the body. And it is [also] written (v. 15): “Its head and burn it.” [This refers to burning the head]. So too, in regard to nipping, the head is by itself and the body is by itself (Zevachim 65a).

ונמצה דמו על קיר המזבח, “and the blood thereof shall be drained out on the side of the altar.” Seeing that if this procedure would be performed by the priest holding a bowl, the amount of blood secured would be minimal, there would not be enough to pick it out of that bowl and to perform the sprinkling of the blood on the top of the altar, the Torah decreed the method described. (B’chor shor)

So too the nipping. Although it is still connected by the skin it is considered separated.

It is transposed. As if it is written: “He shall nip its head, [the blood] shall be squeezed out,” and then: “and he shall burn it.”