When food is cooked in a vessel, the vessel absorbs some of the food, its juice, or its flavor. Earthenware vessels and metal vessels differ with regard to how they release what they have absorbed: metal vessels can be purged of what they have absorbed by boiling them in water, but earthenware vessels cannot be purged of what they have absorbed, neither by boiling them in water nor by any other method. Therefore, when sacrificial meat is cooked in an earthenware vessel, whatever the vessel has absorbed from the offering immediately becomes impossible to ever be eaten and is therefore categorized as sacrificial food that cannot or will not be eaten within the permitted time, which must be immediately destroyed. As is the case with food that absorbs sacrificial juice by contact (as described in the previous verse), an earthenware vessel that absorbs sacrificial juice through cooking assumes its properties and is rendered forbidden in its entirety. Therefore, any earthenware vessel in which meat of any sacrifice of superior holiness has been cooked must be shattered forthwith. Once the vessel is shattered, the sacrificial juice is considered to have been eliminated, similar to how sacrificial meat that cannot be eaten within its time limit must be burned up.
In contrast, if sacrificial meat is cooked in a metal vessel, the vessel does not have to be shattered. Since the absorbed sacrificial juice can be released (and then consumed) if something else is cooked in the vessel, it does not transform the vessel by its very presence into a forbidden entity.
Nonetheless, if the meat of a sin-offering is cooked in a copper or other metal vessel, it must be purged by boiling it in water and then rinsed with cold water inside the Tabernacle precincts in order to cause it to release the sacrificial food that it absorbed. The vessel may then be used as usual. In contrast to the previous rule, this rule applies only to vessels in which sin-offerings were cooked, not any other sacrifices.
