Study Eruvin folio 61A with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
And the residents of a small city may not walk through an entire large city.
What is the reason for this difference? Is it not because these, the residents of the small city, their measure of 2,000 cubits terminated in the middle of the large city, and therefore they may walk only to the end of their 2,000 cubits; and these, the residents of the large city, their measure
And R' Idi, who said that R' Yehoshua ben Levi’s statement has no source, may hold that the Mishnah teaches the two cases with the same formulation. Just as it states: The residents of a large city may walk through an entire small city, it similarly states: The residents of a small city may walk th
The Talmud asks: And did we not learn in the Mishnah about one who was measuring? Didn’t we learn in the Mishnah: And as for one who is measuring his Shabbat limit, with regard to whom the rabbis said that one gives him 2,000 cubits, that applies even if the end of his measurement terminates in the
The Talmud answers: Although there is a source for the case of one whose limit ends in the middle of a city, it was nevertheless necessary for R' Yehoshua ben Levi to teach the case where one’s measure ends at the far end of the city, in which case the entire city is regarded as 4 cubits and the re