Sukkah 040

1:
This mishnah, the last in Chapter 4, is short and simple, so it will not detain us. We have already noted that the rite of the Water Libation was performed on all eight days of the festival, so at least one of the days had to be Shabbat.

2:
On Friday afternoon the officiating priest would fill a golden jug with water from the Siloam pool. Instead of taking it up to the top of the altar he would leave the jug of water in one of the chambers in the Temple precincts (from whence it would be brought the following morning).

3:
Our mishnah emphasizes that the jug used on this occasion had not been sanctified. This means that the jug was an ordinary — secular — jug that had not been sanctified for use in the religious rites of the Bet Mikdash. (On other days the water was kept overnight in sanctified jugs at the top of the altar as described in the previous mishnah.) The reason for this difference is that if the water remained overnight in a sanctified jug the water would have been thereby invalidated.

4:
If it happened that during the night the water was spilled or the lid was removed from the jug then the water was thereby invalidated. The reason for this is that liquids left uncovered were considered to be unfit for human consumption: during the night something may have fallen into the water. Something that is unfit for human consumption is also unfit for the religious rites of the altar.

5:
In the priests' courtyard was a laver which held water from which the priests would wash their hands and feet before beginning their duties. At the end of the day's rituals this laver would be lowered into its own cistern, so it was considered to be covered. In the morning it would be hoisted up out of the cistern for the day's use. If, during the night, the water in the golden jug had been spilled or uncovered, and therefore could not be used, fresh water was drawn from the laver and used in the ceremony of the Water Libation.

6:
This concludes our study of Chapter 4 of this tractate. In the first mishnah of this chapter we were presented with a list of five rites and ceremonies that were especially associated with the festival of sukkot in the Bet Mikdash. Chapter four detailed four of them. The last item — possibly the most significant in its time — is the subject of the fifth and last chapter of the tractate which we shall begin in our next shiur.