The Firstfruits Offering of Roasted Ripe Barley

"And if you offer a meal-offering of firstfruits" (Leviticus 2:14). Rabbi Judah said: The firstfruits meal-offering is destined to cease and to return, and so it says, "And if there will be the Jubilee" (Numbers 36:4) - the Jubilee is destined to cease and to return. Rabbi Shimon says: "And if you offer" - this is a meal-offering that comes as an obligation. Or could it be voluntary? When it says, "You shall bring the omer, the first of your harvest" (Leviticus 23:10), this teaches that it comes only as an obligation. If so, why is "if" stated? To say: if you bring it willingly, I credit it to you as though you had brought it as a freewill gift; and if you do not offer it willingly, I credit it to you as though you had not offered it except for your own need. And so it says, "You shall eat neither bread, nor parched grain, nor fresh ears" (Leviticus 23:14), and so on. Rabbi Ishmael son of Rabbi Yochanan ben Beroka says: One might think he may bring it from spelt, oats, and rye. And there is a logical argument: if wheat, which is fit for other meal-offerings, was not fit for the omer meal-offering, then spelt, oats, and rye, which are not fit for other meal-offerings, surely should not be fit for the omer meal-offering. Barley will prove otherwise, for it was not fit for other meal-offerings yet was fit for the omer meal-offering. No: if you have said this of barley, from which the meal-offering of the suspected wife comes, will you say it of spelt, oats, and rye, from which no meal-offering of the suspected wife comes? Wheat is excluded by the written text, while spelt, oats, and rye are excluded by an argument from the lighter to the heavier case. [Our Rabbis taught] (Rabbi Ishmael says): "Ripe ears parched with fire" (Leviticus 2:14). "Ripe ears" - this means ripe ears. "Parched with fire" - this teaches that they would singe it in the fire so as to fulfill in it the commandment of parching, the words of Rabbi Meir. But the Sages say: "Parched" means nothing other than something else. Another version: "Parched" means nothing other than a light thing; how so? A perforated tube belonging to the parchers was there, pierced like a sieve, so that the fire would have power over all of it. "Ripe ears parched (with fire), crushed grits" - I do not know whether it is the ripe ears that are parched or the grits that are parched; when it says "with fire," it interrupts the matter. "Fresh" (karmel) means tender and easily rubbed. And so it says, "And a man came from Baal-shalishah" (II Kings 4:42), and so on.