Middos 3:6 - 3:7

This is our reading. The height of each step was one-half of a cubit and the depth of each step was a cubit (see also Tractate Middot, Chapter 2, Mishnah 3), a cubit and [another] cubit and the terrace was four cubits. Rabbi Yehuda states that the higher was a cubit and [another] cubit, and the terrace was five. Such is what my teacher/Rabbi Baruch wrote when he found exact older versions, and this is its explanation. רום – the height of the step is one-half of a cubit. Like it was for all of them.

ושלחה – that is, it pulled the width above, for this is the foothold which was a cubit/ And a second step and a third, each one, the depth of each step was a cubit; and this is the “cubit, cubit” as it is taught.

ורובד שלש (the terrace/landing was three cubits) – the fourth step was three cubits wide. And the terrace/landing that is taught, this is a row of the floor , like surrounding landings/terraces of stone, on the fourth terrace/landing that is in the Temple Courtyard. Because the floor was wide without a step, and because of this, it (i.e., the Mishnah) did not say that the depth of each step was three cubits, but rather that the landing was three cubits, meaning the row of the floor.

ואמה אמה – meaning to say, the fifth and sixth steps, each one [of the steps] had a depth of one cubit.

ורובד שלש – and the seventh step was three cubits wide.

העליונה אמה אמה ורובד ארבע – the Explanation: the highest step which is the twelfth after the four steps that were a cubit each, the highest step was four cubits wide until the hall leading to the interior of the Temple. It was found that all the steps are nineteen cubits from the first until the hall leading to the interior of the Temple. And three cubits wide of the floor, part of which was from the altar until the beginning of the steps, there are twenty-two cubits between the hall leading to the interior of the Temple and the altar.

ר' יהודה אומר העליונה ורובד חמש – until the hall leading to the interior of the Temple, for he (i.e.., Rabbi Yehuda) held that at the end of two cubits of the altar begins the steps.

חמש אמלתראות (five main-beams of the ceiling/projecting outside the house) – painted and tiled/cemented beams.

של מילת – of trees that grow on them gall-nut (i.e., a species of oak tree, while Kahati calls it an ash tree, which Jastrow rejects), as we state in [Tractate] Gittin [19a], we are concerned lest it (i.e., the Jewish bill of divorce/Get) was written in a solution of gall-nuts (for a tanned ink will not take on a tanned hide)

התחתונה – the lowest beam lies on the lintel of the opening to the width of the opening which is twenty-cubits wide, and the beam overhangs on the opening a cubit from this side ad a cubit from that side, and the second beam that is above it overhangs on he first a cubit from this side and a cubit from that side, so that its length is twenty-four [cubits]. And the third is twenty-six cubits, and the fourth is twenty-eight cubits, and the fifth is thirty cubits.

ונדבך (a course of stones/layer) – a row, like (Ezra 6:4): “with a course of unused timer for each three courses of hewn stone.”

בין כל אחת ואחת (between every two beams) – these five beams do not touch each other, but rather a row of a structure of stones was between this [beam] and that [beam].