Tract.  Callah.

The Pentateuch contains five thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight verses.  The Psalms have eight verses more than, and the Chronicles eight verses short of, that number.

Kiddushin, fol. 30, col. 1.

The number of verses in the Pentateuch is usually stated at 5845, the mnemonic sign of which is a word in Isaiah xxx. 26, the letters of which stand for 5845.  The verse reads, “Moreover, the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun.”  The Masorites tell us that the number of verses in the Psalms is 2527, and in the two Books of Chronicles 1656.

The world is to last six thousand years.  Two thousand of these are termed the period of disorder, two thousand belong to the dispensation of the law, and two thousand are the days of the Messiah; but because of our iniquities a large fraction of the latter term is already passed and gone without the Messiah giving any sign of His appearing.

Sanhedrin, fol. 97, col. 1.

As the land of Canaan had one year of release in seven, so has the world one millennium of release in seven thousand years; for it is said (Isa. ii. 17), “And the Lord alone will be exalted in that day;” and again (Ps. xcii. 1), “A psalm or song for the Sabbath day,” which means a long Sabbatic period; and again (Ps. xc. 4), “For a thousand years in Thy sight are but as the day of yesterday.”

Ibid.

Tradition records that the ladder (mentioned Gen. xxviii. 12) was eight thousand miles wide, for it is written, “And behold the angels of God ascending and descending upon it.”  Angels ascending, being in the plural, cannot be fewer than two at a time, and so likewise must those descending, so that when they passed they were four abreast at least.  In Daniel x. 6 it is said of the angel, “His body was like Tarshish,” and there is a story that Tarshish extended two thousand miles.

Chullin, fol. 91, col. 2.

The tithes from the herds of Elazer ben Azaryah amounted to twelve thousand calves annually.

Shabbath, fol. 54, col. 2.

It is said that Rabbi Akiva had twelve thousand pairs of disciples dispersed about between Gabbath and Antipatris, and all of them died within a short period because they paid no honor to one another.  The land was then desolate until Rabbi Akiva came among our Rabbis of the south and taught the law to Rabbis Meir, Yehudah, Yossi, Shimon, and Elazer ben Shamua, who re-established its authority.

Yevamoth, fol. 26, col. 2.

After a lapse of twelve years, he returned accompanied by twelve thousand disciples, etc.