Our Gemara on amud beis describes the effectiveness and limits of the method of acquisition used via exchange (kinyan chalifin):  Money cannot be the item used to effect a transaction by means of exchange, as that form of transaction is effective only with regard to items such as produce and vessels. Rav Pappa said: What is the reason for the opinion of the one who says that money cannot be the item used to effect a transaction by means of exchange? It is because the mind of the one acquiring the coin is on the form minted on the coin, not the value of the metal, and the value due to the form is apt to be canceled by the authorities. Therefore, in the eyes of the party acquiring it, the coin itself has no real value and therefore cannot be an item used to effect exchange.

Yismach Moshe (Eikev) applies this idea to understand how if the Jewish people are considered as married to God (Hoshea 2:21), then if they were unfaithful, how can they be taken back. Their betrayals should render them a Sotah and forbidden? Indeed, Yirmayahu (3:1) wonders, “If a man divorces his wife, and she leaves him and gets married to another man, can he ever go back to her?”  Yet, we know, that God does take us back.

Yismach Moshe quotes the Mordechai in Kiddushin who rules that one cannot effectuate a marriage via a coin for the same reason as stated in our Gemara. The woman focuses on the coin, but it actually has no real value other than governmental fiat. Therefore she received nothing to effectuate the Kiddushin. Furthermore, he quotes the Sema”h (CM 202) who explains that coins do not work for kinyan chalifin in similar manner that a loan cannot be transferred via picking up the contract, as those are mere letters which fly off into the air. The real loan is not inside the words or the contract; it is its own construct. The rabbis grappled with the ephemeral ideas of what is currency way before Bitcoin. Midrash Tanchuma (Eikev 11) says that Moshe broke the Tablets so that he as to break the marriage between God and the Jews. This way, the worship of the Golden Calf would not be considered an adulterous betrayal. 

Now we can put all the pieces together.  The Tablets with the Ten Commandments were the object of value given to effect the marriage. Though letters alone cannot accomplish an acquisition. God’s words should have a different level of permanence, and even if mere words, the marriage should be valid. But in reality when the Tablets were broken the words of the Ten Commandments flew up and away into the air as is told in Shemos Rabbah (46:1). This retroactively showed that even those words had a non-permanence and could not accomplish betrothal, and so the Jews did not commit an adulterous betrayal. 

Of course all of this is symbolic. Yet symbolism can sometimes be more true than reality because it captures a reality that is broader than can be contained in mere words.  One can click on the icon of a word processor on your computer “desktop” (which itself is a metaphor), and it activates an entire vast operation.  The symbol is much bigger than the small space it occupies in the physical world.  God forgives grave betrayals, and we should as well.

Translations Courtesy of Sefaria, except when, sometimes, I disagree with the translation

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