By Rav Simcha Klein

It is said in the name of the Gr”a, that the reason a divorce document is called a get in Hebrew, is because the letters that comprise the word get ג ט, never appear together in the entire Tanach, thus they symbolize total severance which is the essence of a divorce.

Rav Chaim Kanievsky Shlita in his commentary on Chumash makes the following comment – “These words of the Gr”a are difficult to understand since I have found that the following pairs of letters ז ט, ז ץ, ס ץ, also never appear together in Tanach”.

(It is amazing that somebody in our generation can have such an astounding fluency in Tanach to be able to make such an unusual assertion.)

Tosfos in Gitten says that the reason a divorce document is called a get is because the numerical value of ג ט is 12 and the halacha is that there needs to be 12 lines in every get.

Perhaps the Gr”a wasn’t offering an independent explanation for the term get, rather he was he was explaining why according to Tosofos the letters ג ט were used to convey the number 12 and not any other combination of letters such as ב י, ד ח, ה ז . To answer that question, the Gr”a said that from all the letter combinations that equal 12, ג ט is the only one that never appears together in the entire Tanach. It is therefore possible that there are other letter combinations that don’t appear together in Tanach as Rav Chaim Kanievsky Shlita pointed out. However, the Gr”a was specifically referring to letter combinations that equal 12.

A Gut Shabbos