Zevachim 86b — the Talmud in English

And we resolve it:

It is necessary

for the ruling of the Mishna only, but rather

with hard pieces

which are hard meat that became hardened on account of the fire that prevailed throughout it, but only that it did not become charcoal; rather, it is like wood that is dry within. And only in these does their law differ between those that fell off before midnight, which must be returned, and those that fell off after midnight, which need not be returned.

And the Gemara explains:

From where are these matters

to distinguish between those that fell off before midnight and those that fell off after midnight?

Rav said: One verse says “

It is the burnt offering upon its firewood on the altar

all night

until morning” [Leviticus 6], regarding the law of

and he shall burn

which is the subject with which the verse is occupied, and its meaning is that the burning shall continue all night,

and one verse

that is, that very same verse,

says ‘all night’

also concerning

and he shall remove

the ashes”—that the mitzva of the removal of ashes shall likewise be at night. And this is because the verse of “and he shall remove the ashes” necessarily refers to what is written immediately above it, “all night,” for it does not say, “And the priest shall put on his linen garment in the morning and he shall remove.” If so, there is here a contradiction: on the one hand, the mitzva of burning must continue all night, and on the other hand, the removal of the ashes of the burning must likewise be performed during the night. How can both of them be fulfilled? Rather, the verse must be explained and said:

Divide

the night,

half of it

stands

for burning,

for consumption is not considered complete until it becomes ash,

and half of it for removal,

for even these hard pieces are fit for removal from this time, and are already called ash.

However, it is simple that since the removal of ashes must be performed with ash and not with meat, anything that has not become ash—even after midnight, if it falls off—must be returned. [And therefore, when we learned here that there is something that stands both for burning and for the removal of ashes, it necessarily refers to hard pieces that became hardened but have not yet become charcoal. Concerning this the verse said that before midnight they still have upon them the mitzva of burning, whereas after midnight they stand for removal. Consequently, if they fell off the altar before midnight, they must be returned, for they still stand for burning; but if they fell off after midnight, when they are already fit for removal, they are not returned, because they no longer have upon them the mitzva of burning].

Rav Kahana raised an objection

against Rav’s statement, that he divided the night into half for burning and half for removal, which implies from his words that before midnight is not the time for the removal of ashes, even for those that have already become ash: we learned:

Every day

he would

remove from the altar

and take from it a panful of ashes

from

the time of

the call of the rooster, or near it, before it or after it. On Yom Kippur

he would remove

at midnight

of the night.

On the Festivals,

when there were many offerings and much ash, and it was necessary to raise it to the ash heap in the center of the altar in order to arrange the pyre and prepare it for the daily offering of the morning, he would remove it already

during the first watch

of the night, which is before midnight.

And

from now,

if it enters your mind

that the mitzva of removing the ashes is

from midnight,

behold, it is

by Torah law

and it may not be advanced, if so,

how do we advance it

on the Festivals, to remove it already during the first watch? And we resolve it:

Rabbi Yohanan said,

it is indeed true that hard pieces before midnight are not fit for removal, as Rabba expounded from the verse that teaches that the consumption of hard pieces is determined according to midnight; and what we find here, removal before midnight, is in a case where it was completely consumed, and we learned this from another exposition. And it is:

From the implication that it is said “all night,” do I not know that

the mitzva of burning is

until morning?

And if the verse were interpreted only according to its plain meaning, as coming to teach us this law of bringing up the limbs and burning them until morning, it need have written only “all night,” and we would automatically know that it is until morning. If so,

what does it come to teach “

until

the

morning”?

Rather, this comes only concerning the mitzva of removal, and so the verse says: “Until morning—and he shall remove,” whose meaning is, he shall remove before morning, to tell you:

Give a morning to the morning of the night

that is, concerning the existing morning, which is dawn, add an additional time before it, which will also be considered morning with regard to the removal of ashes. And since no measure of time was specified for this, everything is done according to the need of the hour.

Therefore

the Sages said:

Every day, from the call of the rooster is sufficient

to perform the removal. But

on Yom Kippur, because of the weakness of the High Priest,

for all the service is placed upon his shoulders, the removal must be advanced, and it is performed

from midnight

of the night.

And on the Festivals, when offerings are numerous,

and because

Israel came early

to the Temple to bring their offerings, therefore the removal is performed already

during the first watch. As it teaches in the final clause

of this baraita,

the call of the rooster had not yet arrived before the Temple courtyard was full of Israel.

It was stated

concerning what we learned in the Mishna regarding limbs that became hardened by the fire but had not yet become charcoal: their time for burning is until midnight, and the time for their removal is established from midnight onward:

They interpreted

those limbs

before midnight,

when the mitzva of burning still applies to them and they must be returned,

and

he

returned them after midnight.

And since they were not upon the altar at midnight, which is the determining time that makes them fit for removal and removes from them the law of burning, their law was not established as removal; consequently, the law of burning still applies to them. From this point the amoraim disputed when the law of removal is established for them: