In the sequel to the above we are told that all the legal documents of Rabbi Eliezer containing his decisions respecting things "clean" were publicly burned with fire, and he himself excommunicated. In consequence of this the whole world was smitten with blight, a third in the olives, a third in the barley, and a third in the wheat; and the Rabbi himself, though excommunicated, continued to be held in the highest regard in Israel.
The Rabbis said to Rabbi Hamnuna, "Rav Ami has written or copied four hundred copies of the law." He replied to them, "Perhaps only (Deut. xxxiii. 4) 'Moses commanded us a law.'" (He meant he did not imagine that any one man could possibly write out four hundred complete copies of the Pentateuch.)
Rabbi Chanena said, "If four hundred years after the destruction of the Temple one offers thee a field worth a thousand denarii for one denarius, don't buy it."
We know by tradition that the treatise "Avodah Zarah," which our father Abraham possessed, contained four hundred chapters, but the treatise as we now have it contains only five.
The camp of Sennacherib was four hundred miles in length.
"Curse ye Meroz," etc. (Judges v. 23). Barak excommunicated Meroz at the blast of four hundred trumpets (lit. horns or cornets).
What is the meaning where it is written (Ps. x. 27), "The fear of the Lord prolongeth days, but the years of the wicked shall be shortened;" "The fear of the Lord prolongeth days" alludes to the four hundred and ten years the first Temple stood, during which period the succession of high priests numbered only eighteen. But "the years of the wicked shall be shortened" is illustrated by the fact that during the four hundred and twenty years that the second Temple stood the succession of high priests numbered more than three hundred. If we deduct the forty years during which Shimon the Righteous held office, and the eighty of Rabbi Yochanan, and the ten of Rabbi Ishmael ben Rabbi, it is evident that not one of the remaining high priests lived to hold office for a whole year.
"The souls which they had gotten in Haran" (Gen. xii. 5). From this time to the giving of the law was four hundred and forty-eight years.
A young girl and ten of her maid-servants were once kidnapped, when a certain Gentile bought them and brought them to his house. One day he gave a pitcher to the child and bade her fetch him water, but one of her servants took the pitcher from her, intending to go instead. The master, observing this, asked the maid why she did so. The servant replied, "By the life of thy head, my lord, I am one of no less than five hundred servants of this child's mother." The master was so touched that he granted them all their freedom.