Kiddushin 59: Wicked Agents and the Thought/Statement/Action Debate

Some agents can't be trusted.  One might betroth the same woman that another man sent him to find.  He might steal land he was sent to acquire on another's behalf.  What do we do in such situations?  The rabbis grapple with these questions in today's daf.

Some of the other questions discussed include:

• is a conditional betrothal similar to a loan (halachically)?
• can a woman retract her acceptance of a conditional betrothal?
• can an action be nullified by a statement?
• can a statement be nullified by a thought?
• can a thought be offset by a statement?
• can a thought be nullified by another thought?
• vessels can become ritually impure through thought; they can become pure again only through an action
• ki yuttan, if water is placed, and ki yittan, if one places, are similar and used to understand the process by which produce becomes ritually impure
• can a betrothal that came into place through an action (ex. the exchange of money) be nullified by a simple statement of retraction?
• if a person states a conditional statement, ex. I betroth you now and in thirty days, or I divorce you now and in thirty days, is the woman betrothed/divorced after two days?
• if the man should die before the end of thirty days, is the woman betrothed/divorced? or is this uncertain?

A number of halachot regarding ritual impurity are assumed to be understood.  For me, it was the first time learning about produce becoming ritually impure if it becomes wet and touches a carcass.  I had never learned that an unfinished vessel is assumed to be ritually pure unless the potter decides to put it aside, in which case it is a finished vessel and now subject to ritual impurity.   Or that if the vessel is then finished, that action can change its status to one of ritual purity again.

Further, these rules about what trumps what are fascinating. An action is the most powerful representation of decisiveness around a change in status.  Next is a statement, and the weakest is a thought. Which has the power to affect the status of an item?  Again, these invisible lines and rules and structures are both formidable and perhaps unnecessarily restrictive.