daf bit: Gittin 62

[cellio]

The mishna teaches: if a husband instructs another man to take a get (bill of divorce) to [the first man's] wife or to receive a get on her behalf, and the husband wishes to retract it before his wife receives it, he may do so. However, if a woman instructs a man to receive a get on her behalf, then once he does so the husband may not retract. The issue is not when the wife receives it but, rather, when she or her appointed agent does so. (Receipt by the husband's agent is not relevant regardless of how the husband instructs him.) The mishna grants the husband an out, however: when the wife's agent collects the get the husband may say he does not agree to his agency; in that case the man carries the get to the wife but she is not divorced until she receives it. (62b)

This does raise the question of why the husbnad would go to all that trouble, particularly in the last case. Under what circumstances would he want to initiate a get but delay or prevent completion of the divorce? Remember, no cell phones -- intercepting the agent once he's on his way isn't necessarily easy.

Comments

[cellio]

There is a lot of case law in the commentary sometimes. You sometimes see exchanges like:

The mishna says X.
But Rabbi Ploni says Y!
He meant only in the case of X'.
Well, what about this baraita [1] that says Z?
That meant in the case of X''.
But X'' and X' are the same thing and Z disagrees with Ploni.
There once was a man who did W.
etc

[1] A baraita is a teaching that's contemporary with the mishna but wasn't recorded in it. (Older sources have a fair bit of weight, being closer to Sinai.)