Book X
. chap, iii., sec. 1, for corroborative evidence. Tradition says that Manasseh caused Isaiah to be sawn asunder with a wooden saw. (See also Yevamoth, fol. 49, col. 2; Sanhedrin, fol. 103, col. 2.)
Nowhere in the Talmud do we find the name of the great image here referred to. What if we christen it the "Juggernaut of the Talmud"? May the tradition not be a prelusion or a reflex of that man-crushing monster? Anyhow, scholars are aware of a community of no inconsiderable extent between the conceptions and legends of the Hindoos and the Rabbis. One notable contrast, however, between this Juggernaut and that of the Hindoos is, that whereas in both cases the innocent suffered for the guilty, in the former that sacrifices were exacted to propitiate Satan, while in the latter they were freely offered in supposed propitiation of the gods.
The food consumed by Og, king of Bashan, consisted of a thousand oxen and as many of all sorts of other beasts, and his drink consisted of a thousand measures, etc.
_Sophrim_, chap. 21, mish. 9.
Solomon made ten candelabra for the Temple; for each he set aside a thousand talents of gold, which he refined in a crucible until they were reduced to the weight of one talent.
_Menachoth_, fol. 29, col. 1.
There was an organ in the Temple which produced a thousand ki