Yoma 25B

תא שמע, רבי יהודה אומר: לא היה פייס למחתה, אלא כהן שזכה בקטרת אומר לזה שעמו ״זכה עמי במחתה״.

Come and hear a proof from a baraita: R' Yehuda says: When the third lottery was held to determine who would perform the burning of the incense, there was no separate lottery held for carrying the coal pan, although a second priest was required to rake up coals from the outer altar, carry them in a coal pan, and put them on the inner altar, where the priest assigned the task of burning the incense would then place the incense onto the coals. Rather, the priest who won the privilege of the incense said to the one who was next to him: Be privileged along with me with the task of carrying the coal pan. This shows that each individual service did not have its own lottery; rather, the other priests adjacent to the winner of the lottery were automatically chosen for the ancillary tasks.

שאני מחתה וקטרת, דחדא עבודה היא.

The Talmud rejects this proof: The tasks of carrying the coal pan and burning the incense are different, because together they are considered as a single service, so that a single lottery determined the participants for the two tasks.

איכא דאמרי: דוקא מחתה וקטרת דחדא עבודה היא, אבל שאר עבודות בעי פייס!

There are those who say that this baraita was brought to derive the opposite conclusion: It was specifically concerning the case of carrying the coal pan and burning the incense, which are considered as two parts of one and the same service, that R' Yehuda said one lottery can be used to assign the two tasks. However, the implication is that other services, which are not interrelated in this manner, require a lottery for each and every separate task. If R' Yehuda had meant this to be a general principle, why did he mention the specific example of the coal pan and the incense?