Rabbi Yudan ben Rabbi Ilai interpreted the verse regarding the Tree of Life and the Garden of Eden. “There are sixty queens,” these are the sixty groups of righteous people that sit in the Garden of Eden beneath the Tree of Life and engage in Torah study. It is taught: The Tree of Life is a walking distance of five hundred years, and all the primordial waters separate and emerge from beneath it. Rabbi Yehuda ben Rabbi Ilai said: This is not only regarding its foliage, but even its trunk was a walking distance of five hundred years.
It is taught: The runoff of a kor27This is a field large enough that it would be seeded with one kor of seed. This is the equivalent of 75,000 square cubits. irrigates a tarkav.28This is a field large enough that it would be seeded with one tarkav of seed. The tarkav is one-sixtieth of a kor. The runoff of Kush irrigates Egypt.
Egypt is a walking distance of forty days, it measures four hundred parasangs by four hundred parasangs, and it is one-sixtieth [the size] of Kush. Kush is a walking distance of more than seven years, and it constitutes one-sixtieth of the world. The length of the world is a walking distance of five hundred years, and its width is a walking distance of five hundred years, and it is one four-hundredth [the size] of Gehenna.
We find that the walking distance of Gehenna is two hundred thousand years. We thus find that the whole world in its entirety is like a pot cover for Gehenna. The world constitutes one-sixtieth [the size] of Eden and Eden is beyond measure.29Some suggest that the text should read that Gehenna is one-sixtieth the size of Eden. “And eighty concubines,” these are the sixty groups of middling people that sit and engage in Torah study outside the Tree of Life.
“And young women without number,” there is no limit to the disciples. Are they, perhaps, in dispute with one another? The verse states: “One is my faultless dove”—they all expound it from one source, from one halakha, from one verbal analogy, from an a fortiori inference.