Sin-Offerings, continued
17 God spoke to Moses, saying,
18 “Speak to Aaron and to his sons, saying, ‘This is the regulation of the sin-offering: The sin-offering must be slaughtered “before God,” i.e., within the precincts of the Tabernacle Courtyard, and specifically, as mentioned previously, in the same place where the ascent-offering is slaughtered, i.e., to the north of the Altar. (This requirement applies to all sin-offerings, even the variable sin-offering, which, because it may be brought as grain—in which case there is no slaughtering—you might assume to be exempt from this requirement even if it is brought as an animal.) A sin-offering is a sacrifice of superior holiness, meaning that it must be eaten within the Tabernacle precincts by the end of the night following the day it was offered up.
19 Any priest who is on duty when the blood is being applied to the Altar and who is fit to offer it up as a sin-offering—i.e., who is not defiled—may be included in the division of the priests’ portions of the meat and eat it. It must be eaten in a holy place, i.e., in the Courtyard of the Tent of Meeting. It may not be eaten before its blood has been applied to the Altar; the same applies to all sacrifices that are eaten.
20 Any food that touches its meat and absorbs some of its juice or flavor will become holy like it: (a) it becomes disqualified if the sacrifice it touched becomes disqualified, and (b) the same restrictions as to who may eat the sacrifice (only priests), where it may be eaten (only in the Tabernacle precincts), and when it may be eaten (by the end of the night following the day it was slaughtered) now apply to it, as well. Even if the food only touches the meat in one place, the meat’s essence is considered to have spread throughout the entire piece of food, rendering all of it subject to the stringencies applicable to the meat. The same rule applies to food that touches any sacrifice of superior holiness.
Furthermore, if any of its blood spurts onto a garment, you must wash the area of the garment onto which it spurted in a holy place, i.e., in the Tabernacle Courtyard. You do not have to wash the entire garment, since, unlike in the previous case, the blood is not considered to have spread instantaneously throughout the entire garment. In contrast to the previous rule, this rule applies only to the blood of sin-offerings, not to that of other sacrifices.
