Q&A: Upon the Cover and Before the Cover: Does He Sprinkle or Flick?
Upon the Cover and Before the Cover: Does He Sprinkle or Flick?
Question
Someone explained to me that sprinkling means throwing the blood with the intention that it reach a particular place, whether above the red line or below the red line on the outer altar.
On Yom Kippur, with the sprinkling on the inner golden altar, how do we identify it there too—how does it reach the horn of the altar? That is a discussion about sprinkling.
Precisely with the sprinklings on the cover, where it has to be upward and downward, there is no imaginary red line on the Ark and the cover; rather, it is about how one throws the blood upward or downward, and he flicks once upward with his finger, tossing it upward, and not necessarily that the blood should reach some "upper" place; and likewise the seven flicks downward are the same finger motion, just reversed downward, and again not necessarily that it should reach some "lower" place.
If so, sprinkling refers to the place the blood reaches,
and flicking refers to the movement of the High Priest.
Is he right?
Answer
I didn’t understand a word.
Discussion on Answer
Flicking too (= throwing) has a target, but it is indeed less precise. That is what Maimonides writes in Laws of Sacrificial Procedure 5:8.
Apparently the Rabbi meant Laws of Sacrificial Procedure 5:12.
In the language of the Sages, flicking can be downward as in modern Hebrew, but also upward, unlike modern Hebrew.
The expression flicking is a way of specifying the action—how exactly the throwing of the blood is done—not where the blood reaches.
Sprinkling is a way of specifying where the blood reaches.
And when he entered the Holy of Holies, he did not intend to sprinkle, but rather to flick.
There is 1 above the cover and 7 below.
After all, there is no red line at all marking where "above the cover" is and where "below" is, and indeed there is no importance to where the blood reaches, only to how he throws the blood.
Therefore the action is one flick with the finger upward, and 7 flicks with the finger downward.
The rest of the blood-throwings in the Temple are directed to reach a precise place above the red line or below it, and therefore they are sprinklings and not flickings.
Indeed?