In the opening mishnah of Tractate Zevachim, we learned that if a priest slaughtered a Passover sacrifice thinking it was a sin offering or vice versa, the sacrifice is invalidated. Each animal must be sacrificed lishma, for its own sake.
Today, the mishnah reiterates this law in order to make it clear that not only the slaughter itself, but the additional elements of conducting the sacrificial service must also be done for the sake of the specific offering. The Talmud shares the details:
With regard to the Paschal offering and the sin offering, where one slaughtered them not for their sake, or collected, conveyed or sprinkled (this blood) not for their sake, or (where he performed one of these sacrificial rites) for their sake and not for their sake, or not for their sake and for their sake, all these are unfit.
Four separate actions constitute the sacrificial offering: slaughtering the animal, collecting its blood in a container, bringing the container to the altar, and sprinkling the blood on the altar. If at any point the priest involved in any of these actions had a brain freeze and mistakenly thought he was conducting a Paschal offering when it was really a sin offering or vice versa, the whole thing is invalidated.
In order to explore the significance of this ruling, it’s important to understand that invalidating a Paschal sacrifice, in particular, would be really bad. We know from the description in the Torah (Exodus 12:3-4) and in Tractate Pesachim that the Paschal lamb needed to be sacrificed on the afternoon before the first night of Passover and that it was eaten communally, with several families pooling their funds to buy a lamb, have it slaughtered in the Temple and then cook and eat all of it together. What would happen if, just a few hours before the holiday started, an expensive Paschal lamb was declared invalid? The families may have no money (or time) to buy another one and the opportunity to participate in the mitzvah of eating the Paschal lamb at the Passover seder would be missed.
You might be asking yourself, how could such an error happen in the first place? How could a Temple priest, whose job it is to offer sacrifices, mistake one offering for another on this of all days? Anyone who observes Passover could tell you that the afternoon before the seder is peak panic time. You know Passover is coming, and fast. But perhaps that’s exactly how the priest could make a mistake. On the afternoon before Passover, the Temple would have been chaos, with multitudes coming to Jerusalem for the pilgrimage festival and money being exchanged for various animals to sacrifice. It would have been a literal zoo. So it’s understandable that a priest might mix things up and think that Shlomo’s Paschal lamb was really Rivka’s sin offering.
In the face of such a possible mishap, and the serious consequences that would result from an invalidated sacrifice, the rabbis try to find ways to mitigate potential disqualification. Here’s one example:
Rabbi Shimon deems it fit if (the prohibited intent was) during the rite of conveying the blood, as he would say: It is impossible (to sacrifice an offering) without slaughtering, or without collection, or without sprinkling, but it is possible without conveying if one slaughters alongside the altar and sprinkles.
According to Rabbi Shimon, if the animal is slaughtered adjacent to the altar, a step is saved since the blood doesn’t need to travel anywhere in order for it to be sprinkled. And so, if the priest forgot whether it was a Paschal or a sin offering during that step, it’s still a kosher sacrifice. As we continue on in Tractate Zevachim, we’ll see other examples of times when a priest might get confused and have improper intent while performing an offering. And we will also see additional ways that the rabbis attempt to salvage an offering that might otherwise be disqualified. At least in our case, mixing up a Paschal sacrifice and a sin offering is an error that can only occur one afternoon a year: on the eve of Passover.
Read all of Zevachim 13 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on September 27, 2025. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
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