Daily Talk
A firstborn animal becomes holy without anyone deciding it should, and it can only be eaten once it has been damaged. The one thing the Rambam forbids is being the reason it was damaged. Why build three chapters around a permission that counts only when it arrives by accident?
The Wound You Are Not Allowed to Arrange
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About This Talk
Bechorot 2 catalogues the wound that sets a firstborn free, 67 permanent blemishes in all, and then spends the rest of the chapter making certain the wound was not your doing, ruling that a man who blemishes his own firstborn is disqualified while the blemish itself stays valid for his son. Chapter 3 takes the question out of the owner's hands entirely, since even an unmistakable blemish permits nothing until an authorized expert has ruled, and an animal slaughtered before that ruling is buried. Chapter 4 goes back to the instant holiness attaches, weighing a gentile's thousandth share, a lien that reaches exactly two generations, and the doubts about what counts as opening a womb that the Rambam records rather than resolves.