Bechoros 9:7-8
Bechoros 9:7
Animals are tithed as follows: one gathers them together in the corral and makes a small opening so that two can’t exit together. He then counts them with a rod: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 8, 9. He marks the tenth to exit with red paint and declares it to be tithe. If he didn’t mark it with red paint, didn’t count the animals with a rod, or if he counted them while they were lying down or standing, it is still tithed. If he had 100 animals and he just took 10, or if he had 10 animals and he just took one, it is not tithed; Rabbi Yosi ben Rabbi Yehuda says that it is considered tithed. If one of the animals already counted jumped back in among the uncounted animals in the corral, they are exempt from being tithed; if an animal selected as a tithe jumped back in, all those animals must graze until they develop a blemish; they may then be eaten by their owners because of those blemishes.
Bechoros 9:8
If two animals exited the corral together, he counts the animals in pairs. If he counted the two animals as one, then the ones counted as nine and ten are unfit (because the actual #10 was called 9 and the one called 10 is actually #11). If the ninth and tenth animals exited together, they are unfit (because we don’t know which is the actual tenth). If he called the ninth animal #10, the tenth animal #9, and the eleventh animal #10, all three are sanctified. The ninth may be eaten when it develops a blemish, the tenth is tithe, the eleventh is brought as a peace offering and is subject to the law of substitutions; this is the opinion of Rabbi Meir. Rabbi Yehuda questioned whether one substitution (i.e., the eleventh animal) can sanctify yet another. The reply, in the name of Rabbi Meir, is that the eleventh animal isn’t a substitution at all because if it were, it wouldn’t be sacrificed. If one called the ninth animal, the tenth animal and the eleventh animal all #10, the eleventh animal isn’t sanctified. The general principle is that if the name of the tenth has not been withheld from the actual tenth animal, then the eleventh animal isn’t sanctified.