Zevachim Chapter 10, Mishnah 3. We continue from where we left off, going down the chain of priorities among the zevachim - animal sacrifices - to determine which of them precedes the other, when a person has two sacrifices to bring or the blood of two sacrifices to sprinkle.
"Habechor kodem lema'aser" - the firstborn precedes the tithe:
Bechor - the male cow, goat, or sheep that is born first, the peter rechem, which opens its mother's womb.
Ma'aser behemah - one who raises cows, goats, or sheep brings all his animals into a pen once a year, at the end of the season; they go out one by one, and every tenth animal is marked as a tithe and brought as a sacrifice.
Why does the bechor precede the ma'aser? The Mishnah gives two reasons: "Mipnei shekedushato merechem vene'echal lakohanim" - because its holiness is from the womb, and it is eaten by kohanim.
"Shekedushato merechem" - because its holiness is from the womb. Simply put, its holiness comes to it from the womb. The bechor is born with built-in holiness, whereas the ma'aser behemah is not born this way: it only becomes a tithe later on, if it emerges tenth when they are counted in the pen. Its holiness is not built-in, and therefore it is lesser.
"Vene'echal lakohanim" - and it is eaten by kohanim. The circle of those who may eat the bechor is much more restricted than that of the ma'aser: the bechor is eaten by kohanim and their families alone, in Jerusalem, similar to Terumah. In contrast, the ma'aser is eaten by anyone - its farmer owner, kohanim, and anyone who wishes - and its consumption is unrestricted. Because of these two reasons, the bechor precedes the ma'aser.
The Eighth Category - the Korban Pesach:
The ma'aser is at the bottom of the list. And if we count the types of zevachim, there is actually an eighth category - the korban Pesach - and it is not mentioned here. The reason is that in any normal situation, the korban Pesach is brought at a specific time: after the afternoon tamid, in the late afternoon hours of the fourteenth of Nisan. Other sacrifices are not brought at that time, and they are not liable to come into conflict with it, and therefore the Mishnah does not discuss it at all.
"Hama'aser kodem la'ofos" - the tithe precedes the bird sacrifices:
The ma'aser, which is at the bottom of the pile, precedes the bird sacrifices - the chatas ha'of and the olat ha'of. There are two reasons for this:
"Mipnei shehu zevach" - because it is an animal sacrifice. The animal is a zevach, and is slaughtered with a knife, unlike the bird which is prepared through melikah with a fingernail, and thereby its greater importance is revealed. Furthermore: many things happen with a zevach and it has special parts - eimurim and the like - and there is nothing of the sort in birds.
"Veyesh bo kodshei kodashim, damo ve'eimurav" - and it contains elements of kodshei kodashim, its blood and its eimurim. There are components of kodshei kodashim in the ma'aser: the sprinkling of the blood and the offering of the eimurim.
We must be careful not to make a mistake in understanding the second reason. The bird sacrifices - the chatas ha'of and the olat ha'of - are both kodshei kodashim, whereas the ma'aser behemah is only kodashim kalim. Seemingly, therefore, at first glance there would be room to say that the birds are specifically more holy, since they are kodshei kodashim. However, the Mishnah teaches that although this is so, there are elements of kodshei kodashim in the ma'aser, and their importance is greater: not only the sprinkled blood - since even in the two bird sacrifices there is sprinkling of blood, and in the ma'aser there is also sprinkling of blood - but also the eimurim, those internal parts that are offered up, which are unique to the ma'aser behemah. In birds, this has no application at all: the birds are eaten by the kohanim in their entirety or burned in the fire in their entirety, and they do not have special parts that are offered up.
It is this special component of the eimurim that makes the ma'aser and the rest of the zevachim - the other animal sacrifices, the mammals - more important than the bird sacrifices.
In summary: In this mishnah, we learned the continuation of the order of precedence among the sacrifices: the firstborn offering precedes the tithe offering, because its sanctity is inherent from the womb and because its consumption is restricted to kohanim and their families; and the tithe offering, even though it is only kodashim kalim, precedes bird offerings, because it is an animal sacrifice slaughtered with a knife, and because it contains elements of kodshei kodashim - its blood and its sacrificial parts.