for the high priest’s breastplate, to the value of some sixty or eighty myriads of golden denarii, but the key of the jewel-chest happened to be under the pillow of his father, who was asleep at the time, and he would not wake him.  In the following year, however, the Holy One—­blessed be He!—­rewarded him with the birth of a red heifer among his herds, for which the sages readily paid him such a sum as compensated him fully for the loss he sustained in honoring his parent.”

Kiddushin, fol. 31, col. 1.

“The Lord hath swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob” (Lam. ii. 2).  Ravin came to Babylon and said in the name of Rabbi Yochanan, “These are the sixty myriads of cities which King Yannai (Jannnaeus) possessed on the royal mount.  The population of each equalled the number that went up out of Egypt, except that of three cities in which that number was doubled.  And these three cities were Caphar Bish (literally, the village of evil), so called because there was no hospice for the reception of strangers therein; Caphar Shichlaiim (village of water-cresses), so called because it was chiefly on that herb that the people subsisted; Caphar Dichraya (the village of male children), so called, says Rabbi Yochanan, because its women first gave birth to boys, and afterward to girls, and then left off bearing.”  Ulla said, “I have seen that place, and am sure that it could not hold sixty myriads of sticks.”  A Sadducee upon this said to Rabbi Chanina, “Ye do not speak the truth.”  The response was, “It is written (Jer. iii. 19), ’The inheritance of a deer,’ as the skin of a deer, unoccupied by the body of the animal, shrinks, so also the land of Israel, unoccupied by its rightful owners, became contracted.”

Gittin, fol. 57, col. 1.

Rabbi Yoshua, the son of Korcha, relates:  “An aged inhabitant of Jerusalem once told me that in this valley two hundred and eleven thousand myriads were massacred by Nebuzaradan, captain of the guard, and in Jerusalem itself he slaughtered upon one stone ninety-four myriads, so that the blood flowed till it touched the blood of Zachariah, that it might be fulfilled which is said (Hos. ii. 4), ’And blood toucheth blood.’  When he saw the blood of Zachariah, and noticed that it was boiling and agitated, he asked, ‘What is this?’ and he was told that it was the spilled blood of the sacrifices.  Then he ordered blood from the sacrifices to be brought and compared it with the blood of the murdered prophet, when, finding the one unlike the other, he said, ’If ye tell me the truth, well and good; if not, I will comb your flesh with iron currycombs!’ Upon this they confessed, ’He was a prophet, and because he rebuked us on matters of religion, we arose and killed him, and it is now some years since his blood has been in the restless condition in which thou seest it.’  ‘Well,’ said he, ’I will pacify him.’  He then brought the greater and lesser Sanhedrin and slaughtered them, but the blood of the prophet did not rest.