Halakhah zu Middot 3:10

The laws of the commandment - for example, from where they would bring these stones with which they would build the altar, that they, may their memory be blessed, said (Mishnah Middot 3:4) that they would bring them from virgin ground or from the Great Sea; the law of if metal touched a stone after the altar was built, whether all of it is disqualified or only it alone is disqualified; that which they, may their memory be blessed, said (Mishnah Middot 3:4), [that] when they whitewashed the altar twice a year, that they did not whitewash it with a tool that had iron in it, so that the iron not touch a stone; and the rest of its details - are [all] elucidated in Tractate Middot (See Mishneh Torah, Laws of The Chosen Temple 1).

And [it] is practiced at the time of the [Temple] by the males of the priesthood. And one who transgresses it and enters the Temple with wild [hair] - meaning after he grows his hair for thirty days - and serves there is liable for death by the hand of the Heavens; as it is stated, (Leviticus 10:6), "you shall not let your head be wild [...] and you shall not die." And the words of the Torah are [in short] - meaning to say, behold if they let their heads be wild, they will die. Nonetheless their service is not disqualified. And one who entered there but did not serve, is with a warning - meaning to say, he violated a negative commandment and is lashed. But he is only in [the category of] the death penalty if he served - since so did the explanation come. And Ramban, may his memory be blessed, wrote (in Sefer HaMitzvot, Mitzvot Lo Taase 163) that one with wild [hair] not enter the Temple is an embellishment from [the Rabbis] and is not from Torah writ; and his proofs are in his book. And he said that the verse is only coming to forbid drawing close for service, and it is included in the negative commandment of one with a blemish who served. And he wrote further that even the Sages only forbade the place that is called, "between the chamber and the altar"; but they did not forbid in front of the altar itself - which is thirty-two ells, as we learned (Mishnah Middot 3:1, 6), "The altar was thirty-two ells [...]; between the chamber and the altar was twenty-two."

And the matter of tsaraat is that one or more places on the skin of the flesh of a man become white - and these places be very white until their white resembles the white of the membrane of an egg and more than it in its whiteness. But the whole time that it is less dark in its appearance than the membrane of an egg, it is not tsaraat but rather a shiny spot (bohak) - meaning to say, a different illness that is not a type of tsaraat at all, but rather like types of rash and other types of [skin] ailments that occur with a person. There are four appearances to the tsaraat on the skin of a man's flesh: Two are primary sources (avot) - and they are the se'et and the baheret - and two are their derivatives. And that is [the meaning] of their, may their memory be blessed, saying (Mishnah Negaim 1:1), "The appearances of ailments are two which are four: Baheret [...] and its adjunct; se'et [...] and its adjunct." And the understanding of its adjunct is meaning to say, its derivative; as the expression, adjunct (sapachat) is only an expression of [being] secondary. And the Sages likened these four appearances: one to clean white wool, and that is the se'et; one to snow, and that is the baheret; one to the lime of the sanctuary, and that is the derivative of the baheret; and one to the membrane of an egg, and that is the derivative of the se'et (Mishnah Negaim 1:1). These are the impure ones and they combine, one with the other, to render impure (Mishnah Negaim 1:3). And anyone who does not recognize them through their differences and their names should only determine them by the mouth of someone who recognizes [them] (Shevuot 6a) - and as it is stated below in the laws of the commandment.