The Horn That Was Cut

About This Talk

Chapter 3 reads the sack of the verse as a definition and rules that a wooden container is susceptible only if it would be carried whether full or empty, so a vessel of undefined use that rests on a base and holds forty se'ah of liquid measure, two kor dry, leaves the system entirely, while five keilim made to be carried full stay susceptible past that size: the water barrel on a wagon, the food trolley of kings, the leather maker's trough, the water reservoir of a small ship and a coffin. It measures the cube from the outside at one cubit by one cubit by three, refuses to deduct the thickness of the walls or count the legs and border, includes a fixed drawer and an affixed domed cover while excluding removable ones, holds a chest pure if it would take forty se'ah leaned or propped, leaves it pure when a leg is removed, and rules glass chests, counters and closets pure while every other glass vessel is susceptible at any size. Chapter 4 sorts wooden implements that hold nothing into three kinds: what serves only a person, like a ladder, is wholly pure; what serves implements and a person, like a table or a bed, is susceptible; what serves implements alone is pure if it is wanted only while the work is done, like a stand under a burning lamp or any mold, and susceptible if it is wanted afterwards too, like the sheath of a knife. It rules a capped headboard impure with its bed and a footless one pure, a shoemaker's press pure because its hollow is made to hold a stone, all ornamental plating pure from the verse about vessels with which work is performed, and lays down that wood serving metal is susceptible while metal serving wood is pure, so a wooden key with one metal tooth is susceptible, a metal pomegranate set on a staff as a handle is pure, and a cap set on to save the wood from the ground is not. Chapter 5 rules that nothing is susceptible until the making is finished, then sets that moment startlingly early, at two circles wound around a wicker tray and one around a sieve, since the object is already fit for its purpose and has the form of that utensil, like a garment partly woven, with boxwood and seemingly bone the only exceptions; it rules that wood never formed into a vessel stays pure while it is used as one, that a shovel gathering waste from the vat is a receptacle and one gathering grain into a heap is not, that only four loops are susceptible because they assist during the work, that the Levites' Temple lyres were pure, and that a ram's horn is not susceptible until it is cut to serve as a vessel.