Komentaryo sa Exodo 27:18: Rashi, Chizkuni, Da'at Zekenim & Or HaChaim

ארך החצר THE LENGTH OF THE ENCLOSURE — i. e. its north and south sides which run from east to west, SHALL BE A HUNDRED CUBITS.

ורוחב חמשים בחמשים, “and the width to be fifty cubits throughout;” not literally 50, but 50 cubits from the north to the south, and 49 cubits from the east to the west side of the Tabernacle. The length of the Tabernacle was 30 cubits on the inside, i.e. 32 cubits on the outside. Likewise the width of the Tabernacle which was 10 cubits on the inside, was 12 cubits wide on the outside. The Tabernacle was erected with its length running parallel to the length of the hangings serving as the walls of the courtyard. Seeing that it was positioned in the center of the width of the courtyard and the hangings and their supporting pillars took up at least half a cubic each, there could not have been more than 49 cubits of open airspace for the width left even for the sections not occupied by the Tabernacle itself inside of it. The western section, after deducting the space occupied by the Tabernacle, would not have been more than 19 cubits of open space by 50 cubits, whereas if the space on either side of the Tabernacle was measured from east to west it would have been 100 cubits by 19 cubits of unimpeded space, on either side of the Tabernacle.

וקומה חמש אמות, “and it height five cubits” (15 handbreadths). In other words the height of the hangings was five cubits (30 handbreadths). If you accept the opinion of the scholar (Talmud, tractate Z’vachim folio 60) who claims that the altar was ten cubits (60 handbreadths) high, the priests performing the service in the Temple Compound on the copper altar were visible to anyone beyond these hangings. [What were the hangings needed for then? Ed] We would have to answer that the height given by the Torah for these hangings was not measured from the ground up, but from the ledge of the altar, so that overall it was fifteen cubits high. Rabbi Yitzchok, son of Avraham posed a different question: If, as according to the plain meaning of our text, the hangings were only five cubits high, even the entrance gate to Solomon’s Temple was five cubits higher than these hangings, and what purpose would they serve? He concluded therefore that whereas the hangings to the south and north of the entrance gate were indeed fifteen cubits high, i.e. five cubits higher that the hangings on the other sides of the Tabernacle. In other words, their total height was twenty cubits. The entrance gate was also twenty cubits high.

ורחב חמשים בחמשים AND THE BREADTH FIFTY EVERYWHERE — The part of the enclosure in the east side was a square of fifty by fifty cubits, for the Tabernacle was thirty cubits long and 10 cubits wide. Its entrance was placed in the east at the end of the outer fifty cubits of the length of the enclosure; consequently it (the Tabernacle) was entirely within the inner (the western) fifty cubits and its length finished up at the end of another thirty cubits (thus using up eighty cubits in the middle of the length of the enclosure); it followed therefore that it had a space of twenty cubits behind, between the hangings of the enclosure in the west and the curtains of the back of the Tabernacle. The breadth of the Tabernacle was using up ten cubits in the middle of the breadth of the enclosure; thus it had a space of twenty cubits on the north and on the south between the hangings of the enclosure and the curtains of the Tabernacle and there was a similar space in the west, as shown above, whilst fifty by fifty was the court in front of it (cf. Eruvin 23b).