For the source text click/tap here: Menachot 91
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All sacrifices – both communal sacrifices and individual sacrifices – are accompanied by wine libations. The source for this is the passages in Sefer Bamidbar (15:1-16) that describes the various sacrifices and how each one comes together with a meal offering and a wine libation. The Gemara then quotes a baraita that examines these pesukim closely and derives a series of halakhot from them regarding the laws of the sacrifices.
One example is the way the Gemara examines the words o la-ayil – “or for a ram” (see pesukim 6-7). The word ayil – ram – is understood as including even the unique sacrifice brought by the kohen gadol on Yom Kippur, in the laws of libations. The word o – “or” – that introduces the ram, is understood as including a palges.
The source for the word palges is found in Greek, where it refers to someone who is no longer a child, but has not yet gained the status of an adult. In our case it refers to an animal that is an “in-between” stage of development. One the one hand, it is more than a year old, so it is no longer a keves – a lamb. On the other hand it is not yet an ayil – a ram – a status that it does not obtain until it is older than 13 months.
We explore the connections once more between Hebrew and Greek loan words.