Parashas Terumah · Passuk 25:10
Sanhedrin 29a
English: Rav Mesharshya derives the principle that adding can diminish from “two cubits and a half its length”: remove the initial aleph from amatayim and it can be read as “two hundred,” showing how an addition can make a lesser numerical expression. Rav Ashi gives another example from “eleven” curtains.
What Is Learned: The wording of the Ark's dimensions illustrates the principle that “one who adds may diminish.”