Menachos Chapter 13, Mishnah 9. At the opening of the previous chapter we established a principle that will serve us here as well: the distinction between kedushas damim (sanctity of value) and kedushas haguf (sanctity of the object itself):
Kedushas damim: the one who consecrates is consecrating only the value, and therefore the item can be exchanged. Someone who consecrated a cup to the Beis HaMikdash may say: a stand is preferable to a cup, and I hereby transfer the sanctity. The cup is worth one hundred and the stand two hundred, and the transfer of sanctity is valid.
Kedushas haguf: the object itself is holy, and there is no way to remove it from its sanctity. If someone consecrated a bird and it became disqualified, it can no longer be offered, and that ends the discussion; he has no ability to transfer its sanctity elsewhere.
Animals: an intermediate case
Cows, goats and sheep are fit for the altar, and therefore once they are consecrated kedushas haguf takes effect upon them and their sanctity cannot be transferred. However, there is a decree of the Torah that if the animal became blemished and was disqualified from being offered, its sanctity may be transferred onto money that redeems it. The animal goes out to chullin and may be eaten, while the money must be used to purchase another animal with the very same sanctity that had been invested in the first animal. In other words: a cow that was consecrated as an olah and became blemished, its sanctity is brought down onto the money, the cow becomes chullin, and the money must be used specifically to buy an olah.
Neder and nedavah
There is another principle needed to understand our Mishnah, and it is a major rule in korbanos and in vows generally: an obligation to bring an animal comes in two forms, a neder (vow) and a nedavah (free-will offering). The difference between them, as explained in the Mishnah in Megillah, lies in the question of responsibility and the obligation to replace:
Nedavah: one who says "this animal is an olah" consecrates this particular animal. If it was lost, stolen, died or became disqualified, it is no longer offered, and he bears no further obligation.
Neder: one who says "I take upon myself to bring an olah" assumes a personal obligation, and even if he designated a particular animal for it, should that animal be lost he must find another animal and offer it, since the obligation rests upon him personally.
"Shor zeh olah v'nistaev" - "This ox is an olah, and it became blemished":
One who says of a particular ox that it is an olah has made a nedavah, and kedushas haguf takes effect on that ox, a sanctity that nothing can change. "V'nistaev" means that it developed a blemish that disqualifies it from being offered, and it can no longer be brought as an olah. What he can do is transfer its sanctity onto money: the ox goes out to chullin, and the money must be used to purchase a different olah.
The Mishnah says: "Im ratzah yavi b'damav shnayim" - there is nothing preventing him from purchasing two animals with its value instead of one. The Mishnah speaks of two bulls in place of one bull, following on from the previous Mishnah, but in practice he may buy sheep, goats or rams with that same money and bring them as an olah. The only rule is that the money carries the sanctity of an olah, but it may be spent on different types of animals.
"Shnei shevarim eilu olah... im ratzah yavi b'demeihen echad" - "These two oxen are an olah... if he wishes he may bring one with their value":
And so too in the reverse case: one who consecrated two oxen as an olah and both became blemished transfers their sanctity onto money, the oxen go out to chullin, and the money must be used to buy an olah. There is nothing preventing him from buying with it a single, especially expensive ox and bringing one choice korban, in which are embodied the value and the sanctity that passed from the two oxen to the money and from the money to the new animal.
The reason, though not complicated, is nonetheless important: there is no personal obligation here at all. He pledged a donation, and once the ox became disqualified he has before him either that ox or nothing. The only rule is that money to which sanctity has been transferred must be spent, and it has only one address - a new olah. But if the money was lost, or if the ox itself was lost before its sanctity was transferred, he bears no further obligations whatsoever. Since the entire question is only what the money will be spent on, provided that the very sanctity from which it came is preserved - the sanctity of an olah - it makes no difference whether he brings one animal or ten, a cow or an ox.
Rabbi's opinion:
Rabbi forbids this, and in his view one must carry out the matter exactly as it was stated: if he said two, he brings two; if he said one, he brings one. Rabbi does not disagree with the principles explained above, but in his view, ideally, since we want a person to fulfill what came out of his mouth, if he said one animal he should not bring two, and if he said two he should not bring one - so that matters remain as close as possible to his original commitment.
From a lamb to a ram and from a ram to a lamb:
Likewise, one who declared of a particular ram that it is an olah and it developed a blemish may bring with its value a lamb of comparable worth. The novelty here is that until now we dealt with number - from two to one and from one to two, and now we are dealing with the transition from the older animal to the younger and from the younger to the older: one who consecrated a young lamb as an olah and it developed a blemish may purchase a ram in its place, a mature sheep. Here too Rabbi says that ideally he should bring the same type he originally obligated himself in, while after the fact even he agrees, since this is a donation and the sanctity passed onto the money, and whatever he purchased with it that carries equal sanctity - another olah, even of a different type - fulfills his obligation. The halachah follows the Tanna Kamma, and therefore we do not even have the preference that Rabbi sought to state.
The Mishnah continues with what the Talmud Bavli counts as a new mishnah:
"Echad mi'kevasai hekdesh", "Echad mi'shevarai hekdesh" - "One of my lambs is consecrated", "one of my oxen is consecrated":
One who had two lambs or two cows and said that one of them is consecrated, without specifying which one he meant - we attribute the sanctity to the more valuable of the two alone. The reason: since consecration takes effect on a specific animal and not on some general matter, the sanctity rests on the animal toward which his unspoken intent was directed, even though his conscious mind did not explicitly choose it. The guiding principle here, upon which the entire remainder of the Mishnah depends, is that a person who makes a vow vows generously - it is an act of generosity at its core, and therefore the manner of consecration will be generous as well. For this reason, when two animals stood before him, one valuable and one cheap, and he did not specify - we presume he intended the valuable one.
"Im sheloshah - ha'beinoni she'bahen hekdesh" - "If there were three, the middle one among them is consecrated":
The Mishnah is not to be read at face value, as though the one of middle value is the consecrated one; rather, even the middle one is regarded as carrying doubtful sanctity. We do not know which of the two animals arose in his mind: we can confidently rule out the least valuable of the three, since a person vows generously, but whether he intended the middle one or the most valuable one is a doubt. Nor can the doubt be resolved by bringing this one or that one, since we do not offer a sacrifice into which sanctity was not verbally invested, that is, one that was not designated as such, and we do not know which of them was designated.
Therefore one must wait until at least one of them develops a blemish. At that point the animal can be redeemed and the sanctity transferred from one to the other, and since it is a monetary matter there is no loss: if animal A is the one that was consecrated, its sanctity now passes to animal B, as explained above; and if animal B is the one that was consecrated in his mind, then it is in any case the place where the sanctity rests. Either way, B can now be offered, while A goes out to non-sacred status. One small problem may arise: if the one that developed the blemish was more valuable than the one that remained unblemished, then in transferring the sanctity from the valuable animal to the cheaper one there remains surplus value that has not been allocated, and therefore the surplus too must be transferred onto money and brought as an olah as well. But these are two separate points.
"Peirashti ve'eini yodei'a mah peirashti" - "I specified but I do not know what I specified":
The final section of the mishnah is somewhat difficult, and we will try to explain it. The case is that of a man who had three animals and says: I designated one of them for hekdesh, but I do not remember which one. Halachically equivalent to it is the second case: "Amar Abba v'eini yodei'a" - my father told me which of the three sheep had been consecrated, and I do not remember which one it was. That is, on his deathbed the father told his son that he had consecrated one of the sheep as an olah, and after he passed away the son, in his distress, could not recall his father's words. In both cases, whether he himself made the declaration or his father did, the rule is "hagadol shebahen hekdesh" - we assume that the consecrated animal is the most valuable one among them.
The reasoning here is twofold. First, a person makes his vows generously, and therefore we rule out the cheapest of them. But beyond that: when a person does not specify, all we know is that in his unspoken intention he did not choose the least valuable one, and there is no proof that he chose the most valuable; here, however, since he stated it explicitly, the assumption is that one who spells something out in words is naming the most valuable among them.
To what may this be compared? A man goes to shul on the night of Rosh Hashanah and thinks to himself that he will buy a mitzvah - there is no telling how it will turn out, whether he will buy hagbahah or shlishi, since it all depends on the bidding. But if he left his house and told his wife explicitly that he is coming home with a mitzvah and intends to bid a certain sum for it, he will not say "I am going to bid on hagbahah," but rather "I am going to get shlishi"; a person does not announce a large financial commitment over the least of the options. And since that is so, one who has the means to keep three sheep and explicitly designated one of them - we assume that he consecrated the most valuable of them. Therefore only the most valuable one is considered consecrated, while the other two are not included in the hekdesh at all, not even out of doubt.