Chapter 7

On Holy Things:

1. “Sacrifices” treats of the nature and quality of the offerings; the time, the place, and the persons, by whom they ought to be killed, prepared, and offered.

2. “Meat Offerings” treats of the flour, oil, and wine, and the wave loaves.

3. “Unconsecrated Things” treats of what is clean and unclean, of not eating the sinew that shrank, and not killing the dam and her young in one day (Deut. xxii. 6).

4. “First Born” treats of their redemption by money, and their being offered in sacrifice; also of the tithes of all manner of cattle.

5. “Estimations” (Lev. xxvii. 2) treats of the way in which things devoted to the Lord are to be valued in order to be redeemed for ordinary use; also, how a priest is to value a field which a person has sanctified.

6. “Cutting Off” treats of offenders being cut off from the Lord.

7. “Exchanges” (Lev. xxvii. 10, 33) treats of the way exchanges are to be effected between sacred things.

8. “Trespass” (Num. v. 6, 8) treats of things partaking of the nature of sacrilege. It asserts that if a man take away a consecrated stone or beam he commits no trespass. If he give it to his companion he commits a trespass, but his companion commits none. If he build it into his house he commits no trespass till he lives in the house long enough to gain the value of a half-farthing. If he take away a consecrated half-farthing he commits no trespass. If he give it to his companion he commits a trespass, but his companion commits none. If he give it to a bath-keeper he commits a trespass though he does not bathe, because the bath-keeper says to him, “See, the bath is open, go in and bathe.”

9. “The Daily Sacrifice” treats of the morning and evening offerings.

10. “The Measurements” treats of the measurements of the Temple.

11. “Birds’ Nests” treats of the mistakes about doves and beasts brought into the Temple for sacrifice.