Middos, Chapter 1, Mishnah 7. Thus far our chapter has led us along the outer edges of the Har Habayit and the Azarah, naming the gates and describing the rooms that stood beside them. Back in Mishnah 5 we met the Beit Hamoked, the chamber named for the fire that burned within it. The Mishnah now circles back to that chamber in order to describe how one entered and left it.
Its position is the key to everything here. The Beit Hamoked was built exactly along the dividing line between the Azarah and the Har Habayit, belonging neither entirely to the one domain nor entirely to the other. Some of the building lay within the sacred courtyard, and some of it lay outside, on the Temple Mount. Any structure sitting astride such a line requires access from both sides, and that is precisely what our mishnah now sets out.
Two Gates
"Shenayim shearim hayu leVeit Hamoked." The chamber was fitted with a pair of entrances, one serving each of the two domains it spanned. "Echad patuach laCheil": the first led outward to the Cheil, on the side of the Har Habayit. "Ve'echad patuach laAzarah": the second opened inward, into the courtyard.
The gate that faced the Cheil was on the northern side. The Cheil is the strip of ground ten amot wide that ran around the outside of the courtyard, right at the edge of the Beit Hamikdash proper, on the Har Habayit. The second gate was on the southern side of the building, and it opened directly into the Azarah.
The two doorways stood directly opposite one another. A man standing in the Cheil could step in through the northern entrance, cross the length of the hall, and emerge from the southern entrance into the Azarah itself. In practice, then, the chamber functioned as a corridor leading from the Temple Mount into the sacred courtyard.
Rabbi Yehudah and the Small Door
"Amar Rabi Yehudah": Rabbi Yehudah supplies a further detail about the inner entrance. "Zeh shehaya patuach laAzarah," the one giving onto the courtyard, was no plain gateway. "Pishpash katan haya lo": fitted into the large door was a pishpash, a little door, a doorway in miniature built inside the great one.
Its purpose? "Shebo nichnasin livlosh et haAzarah," by means of it they would come in to search through the courtyard. The next mishnah will tell us that kohanim passed the night in this hall. Each day, before the avodah could commence, they would go into the Azarah and verify that every one of the keilim, the sacred implements of the service, was resting in its proper place.
Why did they need a small door rather than simply swinging open the gate itself? Because the main gates of the Azarah were not opened until the service had already begun. The inspection came earlier, in the dark of the morning, before the avodah. The pishpash allowed the kohanim to slip in and carry out their check without opening the great gate before its time.