על החוקים לפרטיהם, ספר א מ״וOn the Special Laws, Book I 46
א׳
1[251] When the final day as appointed has come, the law bids him bring, to release him from his vow, three animals, a he-lamb, a ewe-lamb and a ram, the first for a whole-burnt-offering, the ewe-lamb as a sin-offering, and the ram as a preservation-offering.
ב׳
2[252] For all these find their likeness in the maker of the vow: the whole-burnt-offering, because he surrenders not only the other first-fruits and gifts but also his own self; the sin-offering, because he is a man, since even the perfect man, in so far as he is a created being, never escapes from sinning; the preservation-offering, because he has acknowledged and adopted the real preserver, God, as the author of his preservation instead of the physicians and their faculties of healing. For the physicians are mortals ready to perish, unable to secure health even for themselves, and their faculties are not beneficial to all persons nor always to the same persons, but sometimes do great harm: there is Another who is invested with lordship over such faculties and those who exercise them.
ג׳
3[253] I note, and it is a very striking point, that in the three animals brought for the different sacrifices there is no difference of species. They are all of the same species, a ram, a he-lamb and a ewe-lamb. For the law wishes to show in this way what I mentioned a little before, that the three kinds of sacrifice are sisters of one family, because the penitent is preserved and the person preserved from the maladies of his soul repents, and both of them are pressing forward to that perfect and wholly sound frame of mind of which the whole-burnt-offering is a symbol.
ד׳
4[254] Another point—the votary has vowed to bring himself, and while it would be sacrilege that the altar should be defiled by human blood, it was quite necessary that some part of him should be sacrificially offered. The part, therefore, which his zeal prompted him to take was one which can be removed without causing either pain or mutilation. He cut off the hairs of his head, which are to the body like the superfluous branches in the vegetation of a tree, and gave them to the fire in which the flesh of the preservation-offering is cooked, a fitting proceeding to secure that at least some part of the votary’s self which cannot be lawfully brought to the altar should be merged in and share the nature of sacrifice by serving as fuel to a holy flame.