ויקרא, פרק ח׳, פסוק כ״א

Completing a burnt offering during the days of consecration requires a careful process of purification and fire. Specifically, the inner parts and the legs of the ram must be washed before they are placed on the altar to complete the offering. This cleansing is a standard requirement for any burnt offering [ביאור שטיינזלץ].

The identity of the person who actually washed these parts is left unspecified, leading to different perspectives on how the event unfolded. One approach suggests that Moses performed the washing himself. His name is omitted because washing does not strictly require a priest; any ordinary Israelite can do it. Moses took on this common task simply because the detailed laws of the offerings were not yet known to the people [פירושי רד צ הופמן]. Another perspective offers a more practical scenario, suggesting that someone else washed the parts. While Moses was occupied with placing the head and the main pieces on the fire—a sacred duty that specifically requires a priest, and one he had to perform entirely alone since no other priests were yet available—another person simultaneously washed the inner parts and legs to prepare them [ביאור יש״ר].

Once the washing was complete, Moses is described as burning the entire ram, which seems unusual since he was only handling the newly washed parts at that specific moment. This phrasing simply means that by adding the inner parts and legs to the fire, Moses joined them with the pieces he had already offered, successfully completing the burning of the whole animal [ביאור יש״ר, פירושי רד צ הופמן]. Alternatively, this indicates a specific physical action: after placing the final parts on the altar, Moses used a fork to turn and arrange all the various pieces together in the fire so they would burn uniformly as one complete offering [העמק דבר].

The process concludes by noting that everything was done exactly as God commanded. While the original instructions might have given the impression that the entire animal had to be placed on the fire at the exact same time, the accepted tradition clarifies that the burning can be divided into two distinct stages, just as Moses demonstrated [העמק דבר].