Keilim 17:8 - 17:9

כזית שאמרו – as for example, like an olive’s bulk from the dead or from the carrion that ritually defiles, and most of the measurements that are in the Torah are like an olive’s bulk.

אגורי (fit for storage, of good quality) – whose oil is stored within it (see Tractate Berakhot 39a).

כשעורה שאמרו – a bone like a barleycorn (see also Tractate Negaim, Chapter Four, Mishnah Six).

כעדשה שאמרו – a creeping thing defiles like that of a lentil, and is sustenance like that of a lentil.

מביאין טומאה – upon a person who carries them.

בעובי המרדע (like the thickness of an ox goad) – that is from the study of cattle, and its thickness is one finger and a third-of a finger in size, which are two fingers in smallness. And the handbreadth is four fingers in size, which are six small fingers. And it is found that its circumference is a handbreadth. For everything that is its width of a handbreadth there is in its circumference three handbreadths, but they (i.e., the Rabbis) decreed on that which has a circumference of a handbreadth, on account of that whose thickness is a handbreadth, that he brings the ritual defilement from the Torah.

האמה שאמרו – to the matters of Shabbat and Eruvin and Sukkah and the measurements [of the Temple] and Kilayim/mixed seeds.

באמה בינונית – this cubit is six handbreadths long. For there is a cubit that is five [handbreadths] [that is smaller than it]. And there is larger cubit that is six [handbreadths] and a finger in length. But the cubit that is six [handbreadths] is the medium-sized one.

שתי אמות – two measurements that with them they measure the cubits, and each one of them is a cubit.

בשושן הבירה – one room is built on the eastern gate of the courtyard, and upon it, the capital city of Shushan is painted on it, in order that the fear of the kingdom be upon them.

על של משה – on the cubit that is six handbreadths long.

שהאומנין נוטלים בקטנה – that the treasurer/manager would make a condition with the artisans – such-and-such cubits they would make in the building for the keeping of the Temple in repair, from the cubits of Moses, such and such a costs, and they would return to him by a finger (see Tractate Menahot 98a) the measurement of the longer cubit upon it, in order that they would add from their own on their condition, lest they make it less, and it is found that they come to commit a religious sacrilege that they benefited from that which was dedicated to the Temple. And why two? One for silver and gold, that when they make a condition with those who smelt gold and silver to make a tablet of four or five cubits in the cubit of Moses, they restore to the extra measure of it a half-finger, not for the additional measurement upon it of a finger, since the artistry is costly and they don’t cause them to lose so much.