The Hebrew word translated entrance may also be rendered “opening” or “door” (Bible en français courant, La Bible du Semeur), and this may be a better model for some languages to follow.
Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation follow the Septuagint in reading the lowest story (also New American Bible, New Jerusalem Bible, Traduction œcuménique de la Bible, New International Version, and most translations). The Masoretic Text says “the middle story” (so New Revised Standard Version, Nouvelle Bible Segond). Critique Textuelle de l’Ancien Testament gives a {B} rating to the Masoretic Text and suggests that the annex was an open arcade or gallery on the ground floor of the Temple so that no special entrance was needed for the lowest story, but only for the middle and top stories. But it must be said that no one knows exactly how the annex was attached to the rest of the Temple. If the Masoretic Text is followed, New Revised Standard Version provides a helpful model for the whole verse as follows:
• The entrance for the middle story was on the south side of the house: one went up by winding stairs to the middle story, and from the middle story to the third.
On the south side of the house: The south is literally “the right.” Hebrew expresses “north” and “south” in relation to he speaker, who is assumed to be facing east. The Temple ran lengthwise in an east-west direction. New Jerusalem Bible (similarly Revised English Bible) says “at the right-hand corner of the Temple” and New American Bible says “at the right side of the temple.”
One went up by stairs is literally “they went up by stairs.” But the meaning of this indefinite reference is that people in general could go up that way or that “there was access by a spiral stairway” (Revised English Bible). New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh is similar in meaning, but makes the stairs themselves the subject of the verb by translating “winding stairs led up.”
Stairs translates a technical term of architecture which occurs only here in the Old Testament and whose meaning is uncertain. In agreement with the Septuagint rendering, it is often understood to mean something like “winding stairs” (New Revised Standard Version, New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh, New Living Translation), “spiral staircase” (New Jerusalem Bible), or “spiral stairway” (Revised English Bible). But in later Hebrew this term meant “trap-doors,” and that is the rendering found in several translations (Traduction œcuménique de la Bible, Bible de Jérusalem, Gray). Compare also Moffatt for the last half of this verse: “you climbed to the middle row, and from the middle row to the top row, through trap-doors.”
To the middle story, and from the middle story to the third: Good News Translation has “to the second and third stories.” This reflects American usage in which the ground floor is called the first floor. The French translation Maredsous, on the other hand, reflects European usage and refers to “the first floor and from there to the second.”
Quoted with permission from Omanson, Roger L. and Ellington, John E. A Handbook on 1-2 Kings, Volume 1. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2008. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .