Gittin 8:8 - 8:9

כתב סופר גט לאיש – [in order to] divorce his wife with it [the Jewish bill of divorce]

ושובר לאשה – [the receipt] that she will deliver to her husband when he has paid off her Ketubah.

וטעה הסופר – when he delivered the documents to them

ונתן גט לאשה ושובר לאיש – and they (i.e., the now-supposedly former husband and supposedly former wife) delivered [the appropriate documents] each to the other, and she went and married [someone else] thinking that this was the Jewish bill of divorce that her husband delivered to her and this one (i.e., the husband) thought that his wife had delivered him the receipt. And Maimonides has the reading: “and he (i.e., the scribe) gave the Jewish bill of divorce to the man and the receipt to the woman, and he explains [the word] “ונתן /and he gave” that he (i.e., the scribe) thought that he gave the Jewish bill of divorce to the man and the receipt to the woman but [in reality] he did the exact opposite, and this is [a] forced [interpretation].

אם לאלתר – all the while that she did not marry, the Jewish bill of divorce left the hands of the husband

אינו גט – and she requires a new Jewish bill of divorce

ואם לאחר שנשאת – behold, this is a [legitimate] Jewish bill of divorce

לא כל הימנו – Everything is not according to the words of the first husband to believe him.

לאבד זכותו של שני – [of the second husband] that she married, for we say that there was a conspiracy between them and they switched the documents after she had married. And the Halakha is according to Rabbi Eliezer

ולנה עמו בפונדקי – and there are witnesses testifying of the privacy between a man and a woman there but there are no witnesses there for the actual sexual act. The School of Hillel holds that the witnesses testifying to the privacy between a man and a woman are the very same individuals who testify about the actual sexual act, for the presumption is that nobody wants to make his intercourse with a woman one of prostitution (but wants to make her his wife thereby –see Talmud Ketubot 73a), for he has betrothed her with his sexual act. And the School of Shammai holds that they don’t say that the witnesses testifying the privacy between a man and a woman are not the very same individuals who testify about the actual sexual act, until she demonstrates that she has engaged in sexual relations.

גט קרח – [a Jewish bill of divorce that lacks signatures on each of its folds] – that its folds are greater than its witnesses (see the next Mishnah for this definition), for the Rabbis decreed a folded [bill of divorce] document because of impetuous Kohanim who would suddenly write a Jewish bill of divorce for their wives and then regret it and they would not be able to restore them [as their wives] (since Kohanim are prohibited, according to the Torah, to marry a divorcee), and they (i.e., the Rabbis) decreed for them a folded Jewish bill of divorce, which is not easy to write quickly, lest while it is [being written], he becomes appeased. Hence, they write one or two lines and wrap them on the blank part and sew it/fasten it and one witness affixes his signature on the outside part of the fold, and then he returns and writes two or more lines from inside and folds them on the blank part, and the other witnesses affixes his signature on the outside part of the fold, and similarly [for] the third witness. But if there is a fold that is binding them without the signature of a witness from the back, it is a Jewish bill of divorce lacking signatures on each of its fold and is invalid. For by definition, for the number of folds should be the number of witnesses, ab initio, for we are concerned that perhaps the husband said to them: “you will all affix your signatures,” but one witness did not affix his signature, and if the woman married with this Jewish bill of divorce, she should leave both this one (i.e., her new husband) as well as that one {i.e., her former husband). And all of these foregoing conditions apply to her. And our Mishnah is according to Rabbi Meir who said that whomever changes from the formula that our Sages established (see Talmud Gittin 5b), In Jewish bills of divorce, the offspring are illegitimate. But this is not the Halakha.