The mishnah on yesterday’s daf taught that when blood from a kosher sin offering is splattered on a priest’s garment, the garment requires laundering. However, blood from a disqualified sin offering that spatters does not require laundering. On today’s daf, a mishnah lists additional exceptions:
(If the blood of a sin offering) sprayed from the neck onto a garment, it does not require laundering. If it sprayed from the corner or from the base (of the altar), it does not require laundering. If it spilled (from the neck) onto the floor, and the priest collected (the blood and it sprayed on a garment), it does not require laundering. Only blood that was received in a vessel and is fit for sprinkling requires laundering.
In all of these cases, blood either was never collected in a vessel or had already been offered by the time it sprayed. The mishnah ends by articulating the general rule: A garment must be laundered only if it was splattered by blood that was first collected in a vessel and is fit to be sprinkled on the altar. However, the Gemara has a question about this clause:
To exclude what?
Typically, the Mishnah doesn’t provide unifying principles for its rulings — that work is generally taken up by the Gemara. Therefore, when a mishnah does articulate such a principle, after having listed a number of examples, the Gemara assumes that the principle must be coming to teach another example not already listed. In this case, the mishnah already told us explicitly that blood of disqualified sin offerings does not cause a garment to need laundering. It already gave us examples where blood was not collected in a vessel, stating that in such cases a garment also does not require laundering. So why would the mishnah need to rearticulate these criteria? The Gemara generally assumes that the mishnah does not have superfluous elements, so this restatement must teach us something new.
To exclude (the case where a priest) received less blood than is sufficient for sprinkling in this vessel, and less than is sufficient for sprinkling in that vessel.
The general principle comes to teach us an additional exception: If a priest collected the blood in a vessel, but he didn’t collect enough blood to sprinkle in any individual vessel, even if he then combined blood from multiple vessels to constitute the requisite amount, if this blood mixture spattered, it would not require a garment to be laundered.
This teaches us both a rule about our specific case — the requirement to launder garments when blood of a sin offering has splattered upon them — and a broader rule about what blood is valid to be offered on the altar. Collection of the blood in a vessel is a moment that defines the blood’s status; therefore, if at the time of collection there is an insufficient amount of blood to sprinkle on the altar, the blood that has been collected is permanently disqualified.
Read all of Zevachim 93 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on December 16, 2025. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
