Yerushalmi Gittin 7:2 ירושלמי גיטין ז׳:ב׳

MISHNAH: If they³³An indeterminate plural always means 2. said to him³⁴As Rashi points out, he must be either a healthy person or a sick scholar, for whom the special simplified rules for the dangerously ill do not apply., shall we write a bill of divorce for your wife? If he said to them, write³⁵The husband did not appoint the people talking to him as a court since they are only two. Nor did he appoint them as witnesses to his order to the scribe, as explained in the Halakhah., and they told the scribe who wrote, and the witnesses who signed; even though they wrote, signed, and delivered it to him and he delivered it to her, this is an invalid bill of divorce unless he said to the scribe, write, and to the witnesses, sign.

HALAKHAH: “If they said to him, shall we write a bill of divorce for your wife,” etc. If he said to two people, say to X that he shall write³⁶As explained in the preceding Note, this legalizes the writing of the bill. and to Y and Z that they shall sign. Rebbi Ze‘ira in the name of Rebbi³⁷He is identical with the Rav Jeremiah mentioned later in this paragraph. Jeremiah, this happened in the days of Rebbi, and he said, such a thing should not be done in Israel³⁸The Babli, 67a, which attributes the statement to Rav, explains that the procedure is disapproved of since a wife might hire witnesses to falsely instruct the scribe to write and witnesses to sign.. Samuel said, it certainly should be done. Rav Jeremiah asked Samuel³⁹A similar question, in the name of Rav’s Academy, is mentioned in the Babli, 66b.: If he said to two people, say to X that he write and you sign. He said to him, that is a bill of divorce but it needs study⁴⁰The woman is divorced but she cannot remarry based on that bill.. The opinion of Samuel seems inverted. There, he said, it certainly should be done, and here, he says so? There is a difference, because they changed their testimony⁴¹The argument is cryptic. It assumes that the question was: “If he said to two people, tell X that he write and you sign; they told the scribe to sign and others to sign.” (In the Babli, the question is inverted, with the witnesses being instructed to have others sign but they signed themselves.) The question then arises, is it sufficient that the bill of divorce be written correctly (which it is) but not signed according to instructions? (The arguments of the Babli about this case are irrelevant for the Yerushalmi.).

We understand⁴²This now is a discussion of the Mishnah. The persons asking whether a bill of divorce should be written cannot engage witnesses without special authorization. But why should the scribe not be able to write on a simple order since he is able to write the entire bill of divorce in advance, just leaving blanks for the names and addresses of the parties?, to the witnesses, sign! But to the scribe, write? Does this not disagree with Rebbi Joḥanan, since Rebbi Joḥanan said, if he wrote the essential text with the formula, it is valid⁴³The problem of bills written in advance was treated in Chapter 3, Note 17 ff.. He explains it⁴⁴The Mishnah here follows R. Jehudah who prohibits the scribe from using prepared texts. following Rebbi Jehudah, since Rebbi Jehudah invalidates formulas.