Daily Talk
A vessel of stone is one of the few things in the world that can never become impure. Lay that same stone across the mouth of a grave and whoever touches it carries seven days of impurity, and lift it off and it is a stone again. Nothing entered it and nothing was done to it. What changed, if the stone did not?
What the Lime Is For
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About This Talk
Chapter 6 sorts the world by what can be ruined, exempting everything that comes from the sea along with vessels of stone, dung and raw earth, oversized wooden containers and flat implements, and then turns the exemption inside out by making any of those same objects a source of seven day impurity for as long as it serves as the covering stone of a grave. Chapter 7 moves from objects to enclosures, ruling that a sealed structure holding a corpse defiles its own roof and outer walls like a closed grave, while a single opening, or even a settled intention to carry the body out through one particular doorway, concentrates the impurity at that opening and releases everything else. Chapter 8 turns to ground nobody is certain about, the field where a grave was lost, the hills where women buried what they miscarried, the body that must be buried where it was found, and ends with agents of the court going out during the festival with lime to mark what is doubtful, extending the mark a little past the edge and not much past it, so as not to spoil the land.