Menachos, Chapter Two, Mishnah 4. In this mishnah we move to a different type of meal offering, one connected to animal offerings - the meal offering that accompanies the libations, the minchas nesachim. The word 'nesachim' literally means drink, and people often focus only on the pouring of the wine; but in fact every olah and every shelamim - the animal offerings, the livestock - is accompanied by nesachim, which include both the wine libation and the accompanying meal offering.
What is the minchas nesachim:
The minchas nesachim is made of plain fine flour and olive oil. It is not cooked, baked or fried, and all of it goes up on the altar: no kometz is taken from it and no frankincense accompanies it. The amount of flour and oil depends on the type of animal it comes with, whether an olah or a shelamim:
An ox or a cow: three esronim and half a hin, which is six lugin.
A ram (a mature male sheep, one year, one month and one day old): two esronim and a third of a hin, which is four lugin.
A goat or a lamb in its first year: one issaron - the standard, typical amount - and a quarter of a hin, which is three lugin.
So for the smaller animals there are three lugin per issaron, three times the usual amount, and their meal offering is oilier than the norm. The arithmetic shows that the ratio is not proportional: the larger the animal, the less oily its meal offering. In any case, the principle is that these nesachim accompany offerings, and the question underlying the mishnah is: what is the relationship between the minchas nesachim and the offering on whose account it comes?
Here is a detail that may be important for understanding the mishnah: besides being brought with every olah and every shelamim, a minchas nesachim is also brought with two other offerings - the chatas and the asham of a metzora. This detail is usually passed over, but it may be that precisely here it matters.
The connection between the minchas nesachim and the animal offering:
On the one hand, the halachah is that one may bring the nesachim even ten days later: a person brings his olah or his shelamim today, and his nesachim next week. It emerges that they stand on their own.
On the other hand, there is a connection between them. As with every offering, the components must be designated verbally: the flour and oil that were placed in a kli shareis acquire kedushas haguf, and can no longer be redeemed. Once the animal that the meal offering accompanies has been slaughtered - the olah or the shelamim for whose sake it comes - the minchas nesachim becomes bound to that particular animal irreversibly; and with the sprinkling of the animal's blood on the altar, the offering of the minchas nesachim becomes permitted.
Nevertheless, they are not necessarily tied to one another: this one can come today and that one tomorrow. If the components were not prepared and were not designated in advance in a vessel at the time the olah or the shelamim was slaughtered, then there are no specific, sanctified nesachim here; rather, one may come afterward, bring flour and oil, and make the minchas nesachim, since this is a separate obligation.
The dispute between Rabbi Meir and the Chachamim:
The view of the Chachamim (and this is the halachah): the minchas nesachim is like an offering that stands on its own, and there is no real connection between it and the animal offering - and certainly not with regard to pigul. If someone has an invalid intent regarding time about the minchas nesachim at the time the olah or the shelamim is offered, it has no effect.
The view of Rabbi Meir (and this is what stands at the center of the mishnah): if the minchas nesachim is already lying in a kli shareis, sanctified and waiting for the slaughter of the offering it will accompany - then they are joined, since the slaughter of the offering confers upon the meal offering in the vessel a sanctity from which there is no going back. Therefore, one who has thoughts of pigul regarding the minchas nesachim - his intent is relevant, since in that situation it is subordinate to the main offering.
The wording of the Mishnah:
The Mishnah deals with the offering of a sacrifice that requires an accompanying meal offering of libations: if, while performing one of the four essential blood services, he had thoughts that render the offering piggul, the libations that accompany it also become piggul - provided that they were already sitting in a service vessel and waiting, and therefore had received an additional sanctity and an irreversible bond to the sacrifice they accompany. This is the view of Rabbi Meir; the Sages are not mentioned here, but they disagree.
A further point emerges from the Mishnah: this is the same relationship of primary and secondary that we saw in the previous Mishnah. The libations are drawn after the primary sacrifice, but the primary sacrifice is not drawn after the libations. How so? One who slaughters an olah or a shelamim and intends to offer their blood or their sacrificial portions, or to eat them, tomorrow rather than today - "hu unesachim mefugalim" - the sacrifice becomes piggul, and the accompanying libation that was already in the vessel becomes piggul along with it.
A difficulty in the term "tomorrow":
The Mishnah uses the phrase "lehei'achel mimenu lemachar" - to eat from it tomorrow - and this presents a technical difficulty: an olah is never eaten at all; and as for the shelamim, one slaughtered today may be eaten that day, that night, and all of the following day until sunset, so intending to eat it tomorrow is not really an intention of outside its proper time.
Two basic answers were given to this question:
The simple answer, though it is somewhat imprecise: the Mishnah uses "tomorrow" as it does everywhere, but its intent is outside the proper time, not literally tomorrow.
Some do not accept this at all, and hold that the wording is to be understood literally. Accordingly, the Mishnah is speaking specifically about the other type of meal offering of libations - the one that comes, besides with the olah and the shelamim, together with the chatas and the asham of a metzora. These offerings may be eaten for one day only, and so the case is a metzora bringing his asham, and the kohen intends to eat the asham tomorrow and not today: the sacrifice becomes piggul, and the meal offering of libations in the vessel also becomes piggul because it is secondary to it.
By contrast - "lehakriv min hanesachim lemachar" - if, while slaughtering the sacrifice, he intends to burn the meal offering outside its proper time. Note that there is no eating here at all, but offering in the literal sense: there is no eating of a meal offering of libations; rather, the altar as it were consumes it, and all of it is burned. In this case the libations are piggul, since he had an intention of outside the proper time regarding them - but the sacrifice is not piggul, for that relationship of primary and secondary does not operate in the reverse direction.
The practical halachah:
The halachah does not follow this Mishnah. The halachah follows the view of the Sages, that the meal offering of libations is an offering that stands on its own, and it does not have a sufficiently direct connection to the sacrifice it accompanies for it to become piggul. Even Rabbi Meir agrees that as long as the meal offering has not been placed in a vessel it does not become piggul; and the Sages say that even if it is in a vessel, and even though it is the meal offering of libations that comes, as it were, together with the sacrifice, it does not become piggul - it is an offering that stands on its own, and it is brought on its own.
Moreover: in the view of the Sages there is no way at all to render a meal offering of libations piggul, because it does not even have a matir. Since it can be brought days later, it is not truly bound to the sacrifice it accompanies; there is no kemitzah in it, and all of it is burned on the altar. And since it has no matir, there is no piggul in it at all, for nothing becomes piggul except when the matir is performed with an intention of outside its proper time - and that does not apply to a meal offering of libations.
In summary: In this Mishnah we learned the essential nature of the meal offering of libations - fine flour and oil that accompany every olah and shelamim (and likewise the chatas and asham of a metzora), in amounts that vary according to the type of animal, all of it consumed entirely on the altar with no kometz and no frankincense. We examined the two sides of its relationship to the sacrifice: on the one hand it is an offering that stands on its own and may be brought even days later, and on the other hand its sanctification in a vessel and the slaughter of the sacrifice bind it to the sacrifice. From here came the dispute between Rabbi Meir and the Sages regarding piggul, the relationship of primary and secondary between the sacrifice and the libations, the difficulty in the term "tomorrow" and the two ways of resolving it - and finally, the halachah follows the Sages, that there is no piggul in a meal offering of libations at all, because it has no matir.