Or HaChaim on Leviticus 3:12/אור החיים על ויקרא ג׳:י״ב

1 ואם עז קרבנו, If his offering consists of a she-goat, etc. According to Torat Kohanim, the reason why the Torah interrupted the presentation of its subject with the legislation about the goat-offering is to teach that the אליה, fat of the tail, did not have to be included in the part to be offered on the altar (compare 2,9). We must first understand what is meant by "interrupted the subject?" Korban Aharon writes that whereas the Torah should have written here ואם עז, it wrote אם עז. This is obviously erroneous, seeing the Torah does write ואם עז.

2The ריב"א (Rabbi Yitzchak ben Asher Halevi), writes in a Tossaphot on Pessachim 96 that although the procedure outlined by the Torah for the offering of a goat is identical to that of the category כבש in the preceding paragraph except for the offering of the אליה, the fact that it was accorded a separate paragraph must be viewed as an "interruption." As far as I am concerned what the author of Torat Kohanim had in mind is quite simple. When the Torah dealt with the procedures involving the עולה, the burnt-offering, the Torah wrote a paragraph commencing with the words: "if the burnt offering consists of the flock, either sheep or goats, etc. (1,10)," no separate paragraph is accorded to the goats serving as burnt-offering. If, nonetheless, the Torah wrote a special paragraph when the goats serve as peace-offerings, this must certainly be viewed as "an interruption." It indicates that this paragraph must contain a new הלכה.

3The paragraph does not start with the word אם but with the word ואם, to teach that all the laws pertaining to the זבח שלמים, peace-offering sacrifices, outlined previously in the first paragraph of chapter three, apply to such offerings. The only reason that the Torah interrupted its outline of the peace-offerings was to iindicate that the אליה of a goat did not need to be offered on the altar. The reason we know this is that in the enumeration of the details of a peace-offering consisting of a goat (after having listed the details of such offerings when they consisted of sheep), the only detail not mentioned is the reference to the fat of its tail.

4As to the absence of mention of an אליה when the Torah described the procedure of a peace-offering consisting of cattle, there was no need to write anything to exclude this as cattle do not possess a tail wich would fit the definition of אליה. Seeing that no one would have imagined that such a tail be offered on the altar even though it was mentioned in the paragraph dealing with sheep, there was no need to write anything which would serve to exclude the tail of the peace-offering consisting of cattle from being offered on the altar. The author of Torat Kohanim was perfectly justified then in writing that the rule about אליה does not apply to cattle, though there is no word in the Torah which excludes it. The rule we had established earlier that when a paragraph starts with the letter ו, the laws mentioned in the former paragraph and those mentioned in the subsequent paragraph are interchangeable, applies only when the anatomical facts enable us to apply these laws to animals mentioned in either paragraph. When such application is impossible due to the animal mentioned in the former paragraph not possessing the anatomical feature in question, we can ignore such considerations. In the case of an offering consisting of a goat, however, the anatomical conditions which apply to sheep also apply to goats. As a result the Torah needed to exclude the אליה of a goat specifically. Had the Torah lumped sheep and goats together as it did in its description of the rules applying to burnt-offerings, we would have assumed that the fat tail of the goat qualified for burning up on the altar. The Torah therefore wrote a special paragraph dealing with the peace-offerings consisting of goats.