E c'erano quattro camere nella Sala del Fuoco, come nicchie che si aprono in un auditorium. Due [delle nicchie] erano in una parte consacrata [della Sala del Fuoco] e due in una parte non consacrata, e le estremità delle travi [che indicano il confine] erano separate tra consacrate e non consacrate. E a cosa servivano? Quella sudoccidentale era la Camera degli agnelli sacrificali [lì venivano conservati agnelli senza imperfezioni]. Quello sudorientale era la Camera del Lechem HaPanim [showbread]. [Nel] nord-est gli Hasmoneani nascondevano le pietre dell'altare che erano state contaminate dai re di Grecia. [Attraverso] quello nordoccidentale loro [i Kohanim discesero nella Stanza dell'immersione [mikvah].
Bartenura on Mishnah Middot
כקיטוניות (small rooms/recesses) – like small rooms that open to a large house of kings, which is the reception room.
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English Explanation of Mishnah Middot
Introduction
Our mishnah describes the fire chamber. This chamber is also described in Tamid 3:3. In the first mishnah of Middot (and Tamid) we learned that the fire chamber was called as such because it had a large fire which kept the priests warm at night. Today we learn that there were different rooms within the fire chamber, each of them serving a different purpose.
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Bartenura on Mishnah Middot
שתים בקודש ושתים בחול – as the House of the Hearth, part of it is built within the holy Temple courtyard and part of it on the unconsecrated ground.
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English Explanation of Mishnah Middot
There were four chambers inside the fire chamber, like sleeping chambers opening into a hall, two in sacred ground and two in non-holy, and there was a row of mosaic stones separating the holy from the non-holy. For what were they used? The chambers of the fire chamber were small rooms that opened into a larger hall. Two of them were inside the Temple on holy ground and two were outside the Temple. The ones on the outside of the Temple were in the Hel [in Hebrew Hel and hol (non-holy) are almost the same]. There was a fence made of mosaic stones that would separate the chambers inside the Temple from those outside.
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Bartenura on Mishnah Middot
וראשי פספסין (ends of flag-stones the pavement/blocks on the ceiling; cut and polished stone block) – the heads of beams that come out from the wall until the place which is sanctified, in order to know which is sanctified/holy and which is unconsecrated (i.e., north of the room of the hearth) and to consume Holy Food in sanctity.
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English Explanation of Mishnah Middot
The one on the southwest was the chamber of sacrificial lambs, The chamber on the southwest was used to store lambs. This chamber was mentioned in Arakhin 2:5, “there were never less than six inspected lambs in the chamber of lambs.”
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Bartenura on Mishnah Middot
לשכת טלאי קרבן – there were there lambs which passed examination for the daily-offerings, as is taught in the Mishnah (see Tractate Arakhin, Chapter 2, Mishnah 5): There should be no less than six examined lambs in the Chamber of the Lambs.”
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English Explanation of Mishnah Middot
The one on the southeast was the chamber of the showbread. In the chamber on the southeast they would knead and bake the showbread.
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Bartenura on Mishnah Middot
לשכת עושי לחם הפנים – the House of Garmu would make the shew bread there.
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English Explanation of Mishnah Middot
In the one to the northeast the Hasmoneans deposited the stones of the altar which the kings of Greece had defiled. The northeastern chamber was used to store the stones from the altar that the Greeks had defiled by offering foreign sacrifices on it. According to I Maccabees 1:54 (a non-canonical book) when the Maccabees tore down the altar that had been defiled by the Greeks, they deposited the stones until a prophet would come along and tell them what to do with them (see 4: 43-46). In Tamid 3:3 this chamber is called “the chamber of seals.”
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Bartenura on Mishnah Middot
ששקצום מלכי יון – that they offered upon it (i.e., in the northeastern corner) for Idolatrous worship. But in the Tractates Shekalim (see actually Tractate Yoma 15b as the Bar Ilan project has shown me that it is not found in Shekalim at all) and Tamid (see Chapter 3, Mishnah 3), they call it the Chamber of the Seals.
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English Explanation of Mishnah Middot
Through the one on the northwest they used to go down to the bathing place. In the floor of the northwestern chamber there was an opening through which the priests would go down to bathe. In Tamid this is called “the fire chamber” for it was in this chamber that they would keep the fire.
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Bartenura on Mishnah Middot
בה יורדין לבית הטבילה – in that chamber, the Kohen would go down when he observed an emission and he would go with pardon [it must say, that is under] the Temple to the House of Immersion, and there is a fire that warms the Kohen after he immersed and came out and dried off, and it is called the Chamber of the Hearth, because it is open to a large House of the Hearth.
