פירוש על מלכים א 6:8

The entrance of the bottom chamber was in the right side of the house. [Targum] Yonoson rendered תיכונה as the “bottom,”¹⁹It cannot mean the middle story because you would not have an entrance to a building that is one story above ground level. and not as “between” the upper and lower [ones], because the five chambers on the southern side had an opening to the outside in the bottom story. And this (is the meaning) “and by a winding stairway they went up to the middle [chamber].”²⁰Thus indicating that תיכונה was the “bottom” story.

The bottom. [Targum] Yonoson rendered “the middle,” because these chambers were not open to the outside. There were three openings to each. Thus is this taught in Maseches Midos,²¹ 4:3. “One was to the chamber on the right and one was to the chamber on the left and one to the chamber above.” And it teaches us here that one of the lower [chambers] on the southern wall had an opening to the outside and through that opening²²The southern side is called the “right” side, because a person standing inside the Beis Hamikdosh at its entrance and looking out would be facing east and the southern side would be to the right. they entered all the chambers. And the “middle chamber” of the verse, is not the middle one between the upper and the lower [ones], but the middle one of the five chambers on the southern side which had an opening to the outside in the bottom story. And this is the meaning of, “and by a winding stairway they went up to the middle [chamber],” which was above it, signifying that the תיכונה chamber was below.

And by a winding stairway. [Targum] Yonoson rendered, a winding staircase [=מסיבתא], and that is called in our language [O.F.] vis, and in German, vindelstein, and the commonly used name is schvindel stieg. It is a structure of stone pillars made [in the form] of many stairs, and one who goes on them is likened to one spiraling around a column, ascending many amohs on it without needing the inclination of an ordinary ladder, because its spiral serves as its incline.

To the third. [שלישים means the same] as to the third [=שלישיים]