רבי אלעזר בן מתיא

Rabbi Elazar ben Mattya was a tanna, one of the Sages of the Mishnah. He appears in tractate Yevamot, where he is recorded deriving rulings from the verses of the Torah concerning a married woman whose status is in question.

In one teaching, he expounds the verse in Vayikra (21:7), “and a woman divorced from her husband,” reading it precisely — “from her husband, and not from one who is not her husband” — to rule on whether a woman is disqualified from marrying into the priesthood. He teaches that a woman told her husband had died, who was then betrothed and afterward found her husband alive, is permitted to return to him and is not disqualified from the priesthood even though the second man gave her a get. The Gemara in Yevamot also brings a comment of Rav, in the name of Rav, that Rabbi Elazar might have expounded a pearl from this teaching but instead expounded a shard — a remark on the strength of the derivation.