There are certain people who cannot serve as judges because they are relatives of the people involved. People who are not learned, who do not have the wisdom needed to be judges, are also ineligible; they cannot serve as judges. But if both people involved in the case agree that they would accept their verdict, then we do allow them to serve as judges. Here, the Mishnah will tell us that in certain circumstances, somebody involved has the right to remove or withdraw his agreement after the gemar din, after the bottom line, psak halacha (ruling) has been given by the judges.
The Mishnah says: My father is acceptable to me as a judge, even though he is my relative. Or your father. My father is acceptable to me as a judge, even though he is your relative. Or, three shepherds are acceptable to me as judges, even though these shepherds are not fit to be judges because they are not learned in Halacha (Jewish law). Rabbi Meir says that the person who agreed could go back on his verdict and insist that eligible, worthy judges go and handle the situation and retry the case. The Gemara says here that this ruling only applies where the judge ruled against the defendant, and now the defendant has to pay money. He is required to pay money. So in that case, Rabbi Meir would allow the defendant to withdraw his acceptance of that judge and refuse to pay until they retried the case. So only when you are removing money from the defendant—he is being sued by somebody else, and you are removing money from him—could he then go back and say, “No, no, no, I don’t want to choose that judge.” And you could retry the case. We want to make sure that we are taking money away from somebody only when there is a clear 100% certainty that things are happening correctly. We do not want an excuse later on of theft because the judges were improper. Rabbi Meir disagrees with the opinion of the Chachamim (the Sages). They say, “Once the verdict has been handed down, you can’t go back on your agreement.”
A similar machloket (dispute) between Rabbi Meir and the Chachamim. If one person swore to the defendant in order to collect the disputed money, and the defendant said to him, “If you swear to me by the life of your head that your claim is true, I’m going to pay you.” Basically, the person they were trying to remove money from—the defendant, we’ll call him—said, “If you swear to me that I owe you the money on your head, I’m going to pay you the money.” This is a weaker type of swear. We make the person hold on to a Sefer Torah (Torah scroll) and swear on the name of Hashem, and here the defendant is allowing the other person who has the claim against him to get away easy. He’s saying, “You swear on your own head, but not in Torah, not with the name of Hashem.” He’s letting him get away with a weaker type of swear. So Rabbi Meir says the defendant can later on, even after that swear is made against his own head, go back and say, “No, no, no, I want a regular type of swear happening. With the Torah, with the name of Hashem, I’m not going to rely, I’m not going to pay you just because you made a swear based on your own head.” The Chachamim say no. Once the defendant agreed that that type of swear was enough, he cannot go back on his word, and he has to pay him the money. He can’t then reverse things once the swear has already been made.