The primary labors are forty less one: sowing, plowing, reaping, binding sheaves, threshing, winnowing, selecting, grinding, sifting, kneading, baking, shearing wool, bleaching, hackling, dyeing, spinning, weaving, the making of two loops, weaving two threads, dividing two threads, tying and untying, sewing two stitches, tearing in order to sew two stitches, capturing a deer, slaughtering, or flaying, or salting it, curing its hide, scraping it [of its hair], cutting it up, writing two letters, erasing in order to write two letters [over the erasure], building, tearing down, extinguishing, kindling, striking with a hammer, [and] carrying out from one domain to another, These are the forty primary labors less one.

They also stated another general principle: whatever is fit to store and people generally store things like it, and one carries it out on Shabbat, he is liable for a sin-offering on its account. But whatever is not fit to store and people do not [generally] store things like it, and one carries it out on Shabbat, only he that stores it is liable.

He who carries out a cow’s mouthful of straw, a camel’s mouthful of bean stalks, a lamb’s mouthful of clover, a goat’s mouthful of grasses, moist leaves of garlic or moist leaves of onion the size of a dried fig, [or] a goat’s mouthful of dry [leaves], [is liable]. And they do not combine with each other, because they are not alike in their standards. He who carries out [human] food the size of a dried fig is liable, And they combine with each other, because they are equal in their standards, except their shells, kernels, stalks, husks and coarse bran. Rabbi Judah said: excluding the shells of lentils, because they are boiled together with them.