We have reached the final mishnah of Maseches Temurah - chapter seven, mishnah 6. It too deals with items that require burning, and it reads: "Kol hakodashim shenishchatu chutz lizmanan v'chutz limkoman harei eilu yisarfu".
This refers to all disqualified offerings, both animal sacrifices and meal offerings. The case is where, during one of the four essential stages of the service - the slaughtering, the receiving of the blood and its sprinkling, or the parallel stages in a meal offering - the one performing the service had in mind to offer it outside its proper time or outside its proper place, meaning that the blood or the sacrificial parts would be burned, or the meat eaten, at a time or in a place that is unfit. Such an intention disqualifies the offering, and once it is disqualified, its law is that it must be burned.
At first glance it is not clear why the mishnah focused specifically on these two disqualifying intentions, since there are other intentions that disqualify as well, foremost among them the intention of 'shelo lishmah': one who slaughters a sin offering with the wrong type of offering in mind, or with another person in mind, disqualifies the offering and it requires burning. And there are additional disqualifications in offerings:
Tamei - where the animal became tamei after it was slaughtered.
Nosar - where the meat was left over beyond its permitted time.
Pigul and the other disqualifying intentions.
The mishnah cited only two of these cases, but the law in all of them is the same: they all require burning.
"Asham talui yisaref, Rabbi Yehudah omer: yikaver":
The asham talui is one of the six types of guilt offerings, and it is brought because of a doubt. A sin offering is brought for the various prohibitions carrying kareis that a person transgressed unintentionally - for example, one who unintentionally desecrated Shabbos is obligated to bring a sin offering. But when a person does not know for certain whether he became obligated in a sin offering, he cannot bring it, since there is no such thing as a voluntary sin offering: one who brings a sin offering must know clearly that he transgressed and bring it with certainty. Instead he brings an asham talui - an offering that suspends and holds off the consequence of the transgression until it becomes clear whether he is indeed obligated in a sin offering, a clarification that sometimes will never come.
For example: two containers of fat were sitting in the refrigerator, one of them permitted fat and the other forbidden cheilev. Two partners ate, each from a different container, and afterward it became known that one of the containers was cheilev, but it is not known which of them ate from it. The punishment for eating cheilev intentionally is kareis, and unintentionally one is obligated to bring a sin offering - and now both of them stand in doubt, and therefore each of them brings an asham talui.
The case in the mishnah: they brought the asham talui to the Beis HaMikdash, and after it was slaughtered but before its blood was sprinkled - for the decisive, essential moment is the sprinkling of the blood on the altar - people came and announced: "Stop everything! It has been established with certainty that he did not eat from the cheilev but from the permitted fat." He is no longer obligated in an asham talui, and the question arises as to the law of that carcass now lying in the courtyard.
Its law is that of chullin that were slaughtered in the courtyard, since it turns out retroactively that a non-sacred animal was slaughtered there and there was no basis for bringing it. This matter was already disputed in mishnah 4: the tanna kamma held that chullin slaughtered in the courtyard require burial, and Rabbi Shimon held that they require burning. Our anonymous mishnah, that is, the tanna kamma here, follows the view of Rabbi Shimon and requires burning, while Rabbi Yehudah follows the view of the Sages and says that burial suffices. The Rambam rules like the tanna kamma of mishnah 4, that is, like Rabbi Yehudah here: it is not burned but buried.
"Chatas ha'of haba'ah al hasafek tisaref, Rabbi Yehudah omer: yatilenah la'amah":
As stated, a person cannot bring a sin offering unless he knows with certainty that he became obligated in it, and there are two problems with this:
Slaughtering an animal that did not need to be slaughtered - this is a case of chullin (unconsecrated animals) slaughtered in the Temple courtyard.
Offering the flesh of chullin on the Altar.
With a bird chatas, however, for technical reasons it can be brought even in a case of doubt. What is the case? A woman who miscarried - and a woman who miscarries after forty days is obligated in offerings, among them a chatas, and she may bring a bird chatas. If she does not have an exact count, and she is unsure whether she was pregnant forty days or only thirty-nine, she is permitted to bring the bird chatas out of doubt.
And why do the two problems mentioned above not apply here?
There is no chullin slaughtered in the courtyard - because in a bird chatas there is no slaughtering at all, only melikah: instead of a knife cutting through the animal's neck, the kohen pierces with his fingernail from the back of the bird's neck. Melikah is not slaughtering, and therefore there is no slaughtering of chullin in the courtyard here.
There is no offering of chullin on the Altar - in a bird chatas no flesh goes up on the Altar at all, and not the sacrificial parts either, nor anything else; the entire bird is eaten by the kohanim.
And here the problem arises: the normal procedure with a bird chatas is that the kohanim eat it, but with a chatas brought because of a doubt they cannot eat it. For if she was in fact obligated in it, for example if the fetus was forty days old, this is a valid chatas and they must eat it; but if it was only thirty-nine days old and she was not obligated in an offering, then this is not a valid chatas - and since melikah was performed on it rather than shechitah, it has the status of a neveilah, which is not fit to be eaten. And because of the doubt the kohanim do not eat it.
What, then, is done with it? According to the first Tanna it is disposed of by burning - "Chatas ha'of haba'ah al hasafek tisaref" - a bird chatas brought because of a doubt is burned.
Rabbi Yehudah is consistent with his own view, that chullin in the courtyard requires burial and not burning, and this appears to be the halachah. In his opinion it is enough to cut it into limbs, as the Beraisa in the Gemara puts it, and cast it into the amah - the water channel that ran through the Temple courtyard, exited southward through the Water Gate and descended to the Kidron Valley. Placing it in the water channel is like burying it, since the flesh disintegrates, is washed away and is in fact buried down below in the Kidron Valley. The halachah is that this suffices: it is cast into that channel, and with that the matter is finished.
"Kol hanisrafin lo yikaveru vechol hanikbarin lo yisarfu":
We learned in the previous Mishnayos that there are things that require burial and things that require burning. Our Mishnah comes and establishes that one may not change this: whatever requires burial, such as meat cooked in milk, is buried; and whatever requires burning, such as orlah, is burned - and one does not bury what is to be burned, nor burn what is to be buried.
And the reason is this: with items whose mitzvah is burning, once they have been burned their mitzvah has been fulfilled, such as kilei hakerem (mixed species in a vineyard), which the Torah obligated us to burn. And once their mitzvah has been fulfilled, the remaining ash is permitted for benefit and may be used - for example for laundering, as was the practice in the time of the Mishnah. With items that are buried, by contrast, the Torah only forbade benefit from them, and the burial is a rabbinic requirement, as was explained; the ash itself remains forbidden for benefit, since the prohibition of benefit is not removed by the mitzvah of burial. Therefore, if a person burns what is designated for burial, he will be left with ash that he may come to benefit from - and that would create a stumbling block. For this reason: what is designated for burial is buried and the matter ends there, and what is designated for burning is burned.
Rabbi Yehudah disagrees and says: "Im rotzeh lehachmir al atzmo lisrof es hanikbarin rashai" - if one wishes to be stringent with himself and burn those items that are to be buried, he may. Burning is more absolute than burial, and therefore, even though there is no obligation to burn items such as meat cooked in milk and the like, one who wishes to be stringent is permitted to do so. Rabbi Yehudah is not concerned that ash produced from something designated for burial will come to be used. But the Sages say that one may not change and may not deviate from the established procedure, for one can never know, and there is reason to be concerned that the ash may be used.
And not surprisingly, the Rambam rules like the Sages: one may not deviate from the law - what is to be buried is buried, and what is to be burned is burned.
In summary: In this section we learned that all consecrated offerings that were disqualified through an intention of "outside its time" or "outside its place," as well as the other disqualifications, require burning. We examined the law of the asham talui, where it became clear after its slaughter that the owner had never been obligated to bring it, so that it turns out to be non-sacred meat slaughtered in the Temple courtyard, and the dispute whether it is burned or buried - and the Rambam ruled that it is buried. We learned about the bird sin-offering brought because of a doubt, in which there is no concern of slaughtering non-sacred animals in the courtyard and no offering on the altar, and nevertheless the kohanim do not eat it because of the doubt that it is a neveilah, and therefore there is a dispute whether it is burned or cast into the water channel. Finally, we clarified the distinction between those that are burned and those that are buried, whose source is the permission to derive benefit from the ashes once the mitzvah of burning has been performed, and the halachah follows the Sages, that one may not change the procedure.
And with that, with the help of Heaven, we have completed Maseches Temurah. Thank You, Hashem. The next tractate in order is Maseches Kereisos.