lips his soul departed from his body, and a voice was heard from heaven proclaiming, “Blessed art thou, Ravah bar Nachmaini, for thy body is clean.  ‘Clean’ was the word on thy lips when thy spirit departed.”  Then a scroll fell down from heaven into Pumbeditha announcing that Ravah bar Nachmaini was admitted into the academy of heaven.  Apprised of this, Abaii, in company with many other Rabbis, went in search of the body to inter it, but not knowing the spot where he lay, they went to Agma, where they noticed a great number of birds hovering in the air, and concluded that the shadow of their wings shielded the body of the departed.  There, accordingly, they found and buried him; and after mourning three days and three nights over his grave, they arose to depart, when another scroll descended threatening them with excommunication if they did so.  They therefore continued mourning for seven days and seven nights, when, at the end of these, a third scroll descended and bade them go home in peace.  On the day of the death of this Rabbi there arose, it is said, such a mighty tempest in the air that an Arab merchant and the camel on which he was riding were blown bodily over from one side of the river Pappa to the other.  “What meaneth such a storm as this?” cried the merchant, as he lay on the ground.  A voice from heaven answered, “Ravah bar Nachmaini is dead.”  Then he prayed and fled, “Lord of the universe, the whole world is Thine, and Ravah bar Nachmaini is Thine!  Thou art Ravah’s and Ravah is Thine; but wherefore wilt Thou destroy the world?” On this the storm immediately abated, and there was a perfect calm.

Bava Metzia, fol. 86, col. 1.

The above seems to be a Rabbinical satire on the Talmud itself although the orthodox Jews believe that every word in it is historically true.  Well, perhaps it is so; and we outsiders are ignorant, and without the means of judging.

Now we know what God does during the day, but how does He occupy Himself in the night-time?  We may say He does the same as at day-time; or that during the night He rides on a swift cherub over eighteen thousand worlds; as it is said (Ps. lxviii. 17), “The chariots of God are twenty thousand,” less two thousand Shinan; read not Shinan but She-einan, i.e., two thousand less than twenty thousand, therefore eighteen thousand.

Avodah Zarah, fol. 3. col. 2.

Prince Contrukos asked Rabbon Yochanan ben Zacchai how, when the detailed enumeration of the Levites amounted to twenty-two thousand three hundred (the Gershonites, 7500; the Kohathites, 8600; the Merarites, 6200, making in all 22,300), the sum total given is only twenty-two thousand, omitting the three hundred.  “Was Moses, your Rabbi,” he asked, “a cheat or a bad calculator?” He answered, “They were first-borns, and therefore could not be substitutes for the first-born of Israel.”

Bechoroth, fol. 5, col. 1.

“And the inhabitants of Jerusalem did him honor at his death” (2 Chron. xxxii. 33).  This is Hezekiah, king of Judah, at whose funeral thirty-six thousand people attended bare-shouldered, ... and upon his bier was laid a roll of the law, and it was said, “This man has fulfilled what is written in this book.”