Most meal offerings require the addition of oil and/or frankincense to the grain. But some, like the meal offering of a sinner, do not. On today’s daf, a mishnah teaches us that a priest becomes liable for the addition of either ingredient to a meal offering that does not include it, and twice liable for the placement of both. The mishnah continues:
If one placed oil upon the meal offering (that doesn’t require it), he has disqualified it, but if one placed frankincense upon the meal offering (that doesn’t require it), he should gather the frankincense and remove it.
In other words, the placement of oil disqualifies the sacrifice, but the placement of frankincense does not — and it can be corrected by simply removing the frankincense. The reason for this is probably intuitive: Oil mixes into the meal and can’t be separated from it the way pieces of frankincense can.
Yet the Gemara searches for a different explanation. Leviticus 5:11 reads: “He shall place no oil upon it, neither shall he give any frankincense upon it, for it is a sin offering.” According to a beraita:
The phrase “he shall place no oil upon it” teaches that one may not place oil on the meal offering of a sinner, and that if he did place oil on this meal offering he has thereby disqualified it.
Given that the verse also says, “neither shall he give any frankincense upon it,” one might reach the same conclusion regarding frankincense. But this is not so. Why? The beraita points us to the phrase “for it is a sin offering,” meaning that even if one placed frankincense on it, it remains a sin offering. But couldn’t we apply this phrase to the oil as well, thereby preventing it from disqualifying the offering? No, says the baraita, the verse states: “it is a sin offering.” The word “is” here is apparently extraneous, which means it must carry an additional meaning. Namely, that the sin offering remains a sin offering when the frankincense is placed upon the offering, but not oil.
A straightforward reading of Leviticus 5:11 prohibits both oil and frankincense on the meal offering of the sinner. The midrashic reading of the beraita distinguishes between the two by applying its conclusion (that the offering is still a sin offering) only to the adjacent phrase about frankincense and not to the initial one about the oil. The beraita notes the imbalanced reading and asks about why the interpreter chooses to interpret the verse in this way. The response is revealing:
I disqualified the offering due to the addition of oil, since the oil is absorbed in the flour and it is impossible to gather it and remove it from the meal offering. But I render it valid with the addition of frankincense, as it is possible to gather the frankincense and remove it from the meal offering.
The process of midrash halakhah (using midrash to derive law from a verse) is usually presented as determinative. That is, it points out elements of the text which, when decoded, expose details of the law. In today’s example, however, this does not appear to be the case. The rule that oil disqualifies while frankincense emerges not from text, but from the nature of the ingredients themselves. This suggests that the interpreter turned to the verse in search of a midrashic reading that would support the conclusion that they had already reached.
And I wonder, how often is this the case?
Read all of Menachot 59 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on March 11, 2026. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
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