have fallen upon it" when? Should we assume, before it is completed, then it is not yet a vessel; if after, then he takes good care of it? The case may be, before it is completed, yet perhaps at the moment it was made, it was still liquid (and it may be defiled).
"The vessel includes what is within," etc. Whence do we know that? Said R. Hanin: It is written [Num. vii. 14, etc.]: "One spoon of ten shekels of gold, full of incense." The Scripture makes everything that is in the spoon one. R. Kahana objected: We have learned, that R. Aqiba added to the teaching, which immediately follows, the flour and the incense, and the frankincense and the coals, for if the person, in the course of purification, touch the extremity of it, he disqualifies the whole. Now, this addition of R. Aqiba is certainly rabbinical, as the first part of the Mishna states (Edeoth, VIII., 1): R. Simeon b. Bathyra bore testimony with reference to the ashes of the red cow, that if an unclean person touch the extremity of them, he makes all of them unclean; and immediately he says, that R. Aqiba added this? (And R. Hanin says, it is rabbinical.) Said Resh Lakish in the name of Bar Kapara: The addition was only necessary for the rest of the meat-offering. For, biblically, what stands in need of a vessel, the vessel includes it; what does not stand in need of a vessel, the vessel does not include it; but the rabbis went further and ordained that, although a thing does not necessarily belong to a vessel, the vessel, nevertheless, includes it.
"The unclean in the fourth degree," etc. We have learned in a Boraitha: R. Jose said: Whence do we deduce the case of the unclean in the fourth degree, that in the matter of sacred things he is disqualified? By an a fortiori argument. For he who has entered on the last stage of his atonement, while he is free as regards heave-offering, he is disqualified as regards sacred things, so much the more when one is unclean in the third degree who defiles heave-offering that he should become disqualified as regards sacred things if unclean in the fourth degree. We have learned, however, that he who is unclean in the third degree is disqualified as regards sacred things, biblically, and that he who is in the fourth degree—by an a fortiori argument, namely: It is written [Lev. vii. 9]: "And the flesh that toucheth any unclean thing shall not be eaten." Are we not here treating of the touching of a thing of secondary uncleanness? And nevertheless the Scripture says, it shall not be
