Our Gemara on Amud Aleph comments on the consequences whereby various questions in the circumstances of oaths and dedication can cause an obligation for one bird sacrifice to turn into an obligation for seven:

“Rabbi Yehoshua said that there is a parable that explains this situation: This is what people say about a sheep: When it is alive it makes one sound, and when it is dead it makes seven sounds. Its two horns become trumpets, its two shinbones become flutes, its skin becomes a drumhead, its large intestines become harp strings, and its small intestines become lyre strings. Here too, because of the uncertainty as to what had occurred, the woman must bring seven extra birds.”

It is difficult to take this Gemara at face value. Does Rabbi Yehoshua’s aphorism increase our understanding of the sugya? What is he really driving at?

Toldos Yaakov Yosef (Vayigash 16) explains this mystically. The aliveness and death in the metaphor represent the true life or death of the soul’s spiritual enlightenment versus the bodily distraction of the pure intellect by fantasies and desires. If a person is in a state of life, he will find a unified self and singular voice and focus. If he is in a death mode, drawn toward the physical, he will be pulled in many directions. These directions are the seven sounds, also reminiscent of the seven days of creation — the physical world. The chaos surrounding this woman’s numerous unclear oaths ballooned her single sacrifice into seven. When a person is in a scattered emotional or spiritual state, it can lead to physical chaos and disruptions as well. 

Tiferes Yosef, (Likkutei Shas Pesachim 4) says that the “accidental” exposure to a corpse that happens to a Nazir might represent a lacking in his original sincerity and intent of his Nazirite vow. By divine providence, he ends up having to redo his process. The deeper meaning in the metaphor is that if your internal spiritual and emotional drives are integrated and unambivalent, then the outcomes are simple and direct, in one voice. However, if a person is conflicted inside, it can manifest in external chaos and even frustrated spiritual attempts at repair, signified by the seven required sacrifices arising from the confusion and lack of clarity in obligations.