We’ve spent considerable time discussing meal offerings from which a handful is taken and the remainder is eaten by the priests. One might say they are shared by God and the priests, who both partake of them. The mishnah on today’s daf lists those meal offerings from which a handful is not removed and for which there is no remainder:
The meal offering of priests, the meal offering of the high priest and the meal offering brought with libations are offered in their entirety on the altar, and there is no part of them for the priests. In the case of those offerings, the power of the altar is greater than the power of the priests.
The two loaves (of Shavuot) and the showbread are eaten by the priests, and there is no part of them burned on the altar. In the case of those offerings, the power of the priests is greater than the power of the altar.
The meal offerings listed in the first clause are fully burned up on the altar. Meal offerings in the second clause are consumed entirely by the priests, with no part going to the altar. The Gemara has a question with regard to the scope of the mishnah’s list:
And are there no additional cases? What about the burnt offering?
The mishnah is cataloging meal offerings. But the Gemara is curious about animal offerings as well. If we’re listing all sacrificial objects that are consumed entirely by the altar, with none going to the priests, why not mention the burnt offering which, as its name suggests, is burned in its entirety on the altar?
The Gemara replies:
There is the burnt offering’s hide, which is given to the priests.
The Gemara rejects the burnt offering as another example of something offered entirely to the altar. Though the priests get none of its meat, they can keep its hide.
The Gemara then poses follow-up suggestions:
But isn’t there the bird sacrificed as a burnt offering?
There is its crop and its feathers.
But aren’t there wine libations?
They go to the drainpipes.
Unlike the animal burnt offerings, burnt offerings of birds don’t have any hides retained by the priests. However, the Gemara points out that these still aren’t consumed entirely by the altar, like the meal offerings in our mishnah, since their crop and feathers are removed and discarded. Similarly, the wine libation, which is poured out in its entirety, might have been considered given entirely to God, as nothing of it is reserved. But the Gemara responds by clarifying that these libations go down the drainpipes, not on the altar. Therefore, though the priests get none of the wine, the altar doesn’t receive it either.
The Gemara has now demonstrated that the meal offerings listed in the mishnah are in fact the only offerings entirely sacrificed on the altar, with no part going to the priests or being discarded.
And what are we to make of the mishnah’s strange turn of phrase: “in those, the altar’s power is greater than the power of the priests”?
The Gemara offers this explanation:
It’s to exclude the opinion of Shmuel, as Shmuel said: One who donates wine brings it and pours it over the fires of the altar. The mishnah’s wording teaches us that this wine goes to the drainpipes.
Anachronistically, the Gemara suggests that this limiting phrase in the mishnah comes to exclude the position of an amora — a rabbi who lived and taught long after the Mishnah was completed. Unlike some of his other colleagues, Shmuel believes that wine libations are poured on the fires of the altar, making them another example of a sacrifice where “the altar’s power is greater.” Therefore, the mishnah’s limiting phrase “in those” comes to teach that only those meal offerings are offered in their entirety on the altar, but libations are poured down the drain, and neither the priests nor the altar benefits.
What are we to make of the idea that the mishnah anticipated the position of Shmuel, who lived centuries after its composition? Assertions like this are common in the Gemara, and there are a few ways of understanding them. One possibility is that while these positions are articulated by later sages, they were familiar to (if not accepted by) earlier ones.
In the case of our daf, that would mean that while Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi (codifier of the mishnah) didn’t know Shmuel specificallywould argue that a wine libation is offered on the altar, he was familiar with that alternate view (and wrote the mishnah to exclude it). Alternately, the Gemara can also be seen as playing with a sense of linear time and attribution. If, as the rabbis believed, all Oral Torah is thought to have been transmitted to Moses at Sinai, and the rabbis are merely articulating and fine-tuning it, then there’s a sense in which all these positions are believed to be already existent even in the times of the earlier sages.
Read all of Menachot 74 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on March 26, 2026. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
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