Midnight is not a particularly Jewish time. At sundown, Jews start a new day. At dawn they say Shema. But no calendrical significance is assigned to midnight, when the world is largely asleep. Midnight is a time when eerie and irregular things happen: God smites the firstborn of Egypt (Exodus 12:29), Samson secretly tears down enemy city gates (Judges 16:3), one woman steals an infant from another (1 Kings 3:20).
So it is a bit surprising to see a mishnah on today’s daf assert that midnight is a significant time in the sacrificial service:
Limbs of a burnt offering that were dislodged from the altar, if they were dislodged before midnight, the priest should restore them to the altar and one is liable for misusing them. But if they were dislodged after midnight, the priest does not restore them and one is not liable for misusing them.
A burnt offering, as we now know, must be burned in its entirety. The question here is what happens if pieces of the carcass are spontaneously tossed out of the altar fire. Are these still considered part of the offering and therefore must be restored to the flames? Or have they reverted into ordinary items that can be touched, tossed or used as any other ordinary item might?
Curiously, the mishnah’s answer to this question has nothing to do with the size, shape or level of charring on the limbs. Rather, it is the time at which the fire spits them out that determines their status. Before midnight, they still have sacred status and should be placed back on the altar. After midnight, they’re no more than scraps that can lie on the floor to be swept up in the morning.
Immediately the Gemara proposes the possibility that the mishnah is wrong, and that what really matters is the size and intactness of the limb that has fallen from the flames:
What are the circumstances? If the limbs have substance (Steinsaltz glosses: they were not yet consumed in their entirety by the fire), then even if they were dislodged after midnight the priest must return them to the fire. If they do not have substance, then even if they were dislodged before midnight the priest does not return them to the altar.
This makes more sense. Bits of ash need not be returned to the altar, while pieces of flesh that have not yet fully burned should be returned to finish the process. After all, the point of a burned offering is to burn it up entirely. In this interpretation, the time at which the flesh fell does not matter.
The Gemara might have stopped here — correcting the mishnah to make it more logical. But instead, this correction is rejected and Rav explains that the midnight deadline comes from a close reading of Leviticus 6:2–3: “This is the ritual of the burnt offering: The burnt offering itself shall remain where it is burned upon the altar all night until morning, while the fire on the altar is kept going on it … and he shall take up the ashes to which the fire has reduced the burnt offering on the altar and place them beside the altar.”
A casual reader might find this unambiguous: The burnt offering stays on the altar all night until morning, after which the priests clear away the ashes. But if we read this as one sentence and take it completely literally, then the phrase “all night until morning” not only sets the time parameters for burning, it also describes the time that the priest is clearing up the ashes. Of course, this also makes no sense. The priest can’t clear away the ashes while the sacrifice is actively burning. Rav’s solution?
Divide the night into two parts: Half of the night (i.e., until midnight) is designated for burning, and half of the night (i.e., after midnight) is designated for removing.
So let’s review what has happened in this brief exchange: The mishnah posits a law that is surprising on several levels. It is surprising that we would, under any circumstances, not return meat from a burned offering that has fallen off the altar. It is also surprising that we would consider that meat no longer sacred based on the time it fell — and that that time would be governed by an unusual deadline of midnight. The Gemara had a simple solution to all this strangeness: Correct the mishnah. But it chose a different route. Instead, Rav accepted the mishnah at face value, and found a biblical basis for it. How did he do that? He took a biblical passage that, on the surface, had no difficulties, and managed to find a difficulty in it — then showed how the mishnah was the solution to that difficulty!
This is part of what makes the Talmud endlessly fascinating. The rabbis are constantly balancing their commitments to logic and their commitments to texts that are not always logical. Most of us, when faced with this difficulty, would choose to throw away logic or throw away a text. Whenever possible, they do neither — they keep and treasure both.
Read all of Zevachim 86 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on December 9, 2025. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
