Here we'll talk about a sale of land for building a house, or about a person who was contracted to build a house. What does he have to provide in terms of size? The Mishnah says that if somebody sells a lot of land to his friend so his friend could build a house on that piece of land, the house was mentioned in the sale. If somebody was a contractor who accepted the whole job to build a house for his friend, he has to provide a certain type of house and a certain amount of land for that house to be built upon. Each type of house has a different minimum.
If a person accepted the job to build a newlywed house for his son—in those days, they would build a home right near their own house for their son to stay in—or if his daughter was married and passed away, so she now wants to come back and live with them, they wouldn't put her back into the normal house. They would build her a small room, like a one-room house next to her parents. That house has to be built four Amot (cubits) by six Amot. This is the opinion: a four-by-six Amot house, a very small house with one room where they would live.
Rabbi Yishmael disagrees. He says that house is so small that you're talking about for a newlywed or for a beit almanut, or for a woman who's a widow coming back to her parents. That type of four-by-six house, that's enough for a stable, for an animal. That's what you would do if you were building a stable for somebody and had accepted a contract to build one: it would be a four-by-six structure. But a newlywed or a widow would need something bigger than that. Rabbi Yishmael doesn't say how big he thinks it has to be, but it has to be bigger than four by six. If somebody was contracted to build a small house—that's what it was called—the seller has to provide land and build a house that was six by eight Amot. Gadol (a big house): if someone was contracted to build one, that house has to be eight by ten Amot. That's what the seller has to provide him: eight by ten Amot of land and a house on top of that. Tarklin (a mansion for an official): if he was contracted to build one, then the house and the lot have to be ten by ten Amot.
How high does the house have to be if someone's contracting? Rumo, according to this opinion, the height of the house has to be the length of the house plus the width of the house cut in half, divided by two. So let's say I have a newlywed house or a widow's house. We said that, according to Rabbi Akiva, it has to be four by six Amot. We add those two measurements together: four plus six is ten. So the height, divided by two, has to be five. If you were talking about a small house, which we said is six by eight, that's a total of fourteen; cut in half, the minimum height has to be seven. Vechulei (so on); it applies to every single house. Re'ayah la-davar meheichal. And they bring a proof of this from the heichal (sanctuary) in the Bet HaMikdash that was built by Shlomo HaMelech. The heichal was forty Amot long and twenty Amot wide. Twenty plus forty equals sixty, so the height is expected to be thirty, which it was. That's the formula we use: just like the heichal in the Bet HaMikdash was that high, based on that ratio, we use it for all other homes as well.
Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says, “Is everyone going to build such a grand house with perfect proportions like the heichal of the Bet HaMikdash? Of course not. The Bet HaMikdash is the best and greatest building in all of the land. You can't use the ratios of the Bet HaMikdash to provide the standard for people's construction of their own homes.” So argues Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel. He doesn't provide us with an alternative, but we would understand that it's the common custom in that community. However, if homes were built according to code, according to the zoning, then that's how the contractor would be obligated to build the height of the house for the person who contracted him.