The Sages taught in the Tosefta: An incident occurred where there were two priests who were equal as they were running and ascending the ramp. One of them reached the four cubits before his colleague, who then, out of anger, took a knife and stabbed him in the heart. The Tosefta continues: Rabbi Tzadok then stood up on the steps of the Entrance Hall of the Sanctuary and said: Hear this, my brothers of the house of Israel. The verse states: “If one be found slain in the land... and it be not known who had smitten him; then your Elders and your judges shall come forth and they shall measure…and it shall be that the city which is nearest to the slain man…shall take a heifer” (Deuteronomy 21:1–3). And the Elders of that city took that heifer and broke its neck in a ritual of atonement. But what of us, in our situation? Upon whom is the obligation to bring the heifer whose neck is broken? Does the obligation fall on the city, Jerusalem, so that its Sages must bring the calf, or does the obligation fall upon the Temple courtyards, so that the priests must bring it? At that point the entire assembly of people burst into tears. The father of the boy, i.e., the young priest who was stabbed, came and found that he was still convulsing. He said: May my son’s death be an atonement for you. But my son is still convulsing and has not yet died, and as such, the knife, which is in his body, has not become ritually impure through contact with a corpse. If you remove it promptly, it will still be pure for future use. The Tosefta comments: This incident comes to teach you that the ritual purity of utensils was of more concern to them than the shedding of blood...Initially, the Sages thought that it was merely a random, i.e., isolated, event, and because it was extremely unlikely for a murder to happen again they did not abolish the competition due to that incident. Then, once they saw that in any event the priests were coming to danger, as one of them was pushed and broke his leg, the Sages established a lottery. The Gemara returns to the incident of the slain priest and discusses several details of it. It was told that Rabbi Tzadok stood up on the steps of the Entrance Hall of the Sanctuary and said: Hear this, my brothers of the house of Israel. The verse states: “If one be found slain in the land, etc.” But what of us, in our situation? Upon whom is the obligation to bring the heifer whose neck is broken? Does the obligation fall upon the city, Jerusalem, or does the obligation fall upon the Temple courtyards? The Gemara asks: Is Jerusalem subject to bringing a heifer whose neck is broken? Wasn’t it taught in a baraita: Ten things were said about Jerusalem to distinguish it from all other cities in Eretz Yisrael, and this is one of them:
Jerusalem does not bring a heifer whose neck is broken. The reason for this is that the halakha of the heifer whose neck is broken applies only to land that was apportioned to a specific tribe of the Jewish people. Jerusalem alone was not divided among the tribes, but was shared equally by the entire nation. And furthermore, it is written that the heifer whose neck is broken is brought when “it be not known who had smitten him,” and here, in the case of the slain priest, it was well known who had smitten him. Rather, one must conclude that Rabbi Tzadok invoked the halakha of the heifer whose neck is broken not because it actually applied in this case but only in order to arouse the people’s grief and to increase weeping. In relating the above incident the Tosefta said: The father of the boy came and found that he was still convulsing. He said: May my son’s death be an atonement for you. But my son is still alive, etc. This incident comes to teach you that the ritual purity of utensils was of more concern to them than the shedding of blood. A dilemma was raised before the Sages: Should one conclude from this comment that bloodshed had become trivialized in their eyes but their concern for purity of utensils remained where it was originally, meaning that while they cared less than they should have about murder, they did not exaggerate the importance of purity of utensils; or perhaps their concern for bloodshed remained where it was originally, but their concern for purity of vessels had become too strict, to the extent that its importance was exaggerated beyond concern for human life? The Gemara answers: Come and hear an answer to the dilemma: Since the Tosefta adduces a biblical teaching from the verse, “Furthermore, Manasseh spilled innocent blood,” conclude from this that it was bloodshed that had become trivialized, and the importance of purity of utensils remained where it had been.