The rabbis determine how ordinary people can live with potential idols in their midst. They have to be wary of finding broken idols. A statue of anyone holding something in his/her hand might have been worshipped, as well. When a person is up above others and/or is holding things, this might symbolize its dominion over the world.
The rabbis' last questions are not answered. How should we interpret finding a statue that is a potential idol holding excrement? Perhaps the rest of the world is like excrement; perhaps the entire being is worshipped.
A new Mishna teaches that unidentifiable parts of statues are permitted to us. In contrast, hands, feet, and other parts of broken statues might have been worshipped as part of idols in the past and thus we cannot benefit from them. We must distance ourselves from these.
The Gemara discusses these found fragments. Might they be other things? And what if they were not properly prepared as tithed objects? One of the notes we learn is that a chaver, a reliably halachic Jew, would always have prepared such items in advent not wishing that we should mistakenly use something forbidden.
Our daf ends with the beginning of the story of a maidservant. This story is shared to explain that an uncertainty cannot be used to change a certainty.
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