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Good morning chevra, and blessings for 2024.
The real action of Perek Bet begins with Mishna 2 (whose content ironically has nothing to do with anything else in the perek.) It is in Mishna 2 that the perek's first main principle is articulated, namely הפה שאסר הוא הפה שהתיר. This principle establishes that when a particular legal matter depends entirely upon the testimony of the individual at the center of the matter, meaning that there are no external independent witnesses available and we therefore would know nothing without the information being provided by the self-attesting person, we accept the testimony of that person in its entirety. For example, if a woman states ,"I was married, but then I was divorced", her words become our legal reality.
Mishnayot 2-6 all work off this principle, with Mishna 6 being the other side of the coin , i.e. a case in which there are independent witnesses as to the first half of what the individual is testifying about herself. Here, the self-attester's statement alone requires further verification in order to be accepted in toto.
Mishna 6 also functions as transition to the latter half of the perek, in two respects: (1) We know move into issues that are relevant specifically to Kohanim and their marriages (these actually begin in the second half of Mishna 5) , and (2) we introduce the general acceptability of one witness regarding many of these kohen-related issues.
Mishnayot 5, 6 and 9 introduce us to the very tragic and challenging halacha that if the wife of a kohen is raped, God forbid, she and her husband must discontinue their marriage due do the restrictions on whom a kohen may be married to. The only way out of this is for the husband to insist that he does not believe his wife's report, in which case presuming that there are no witnesses to the violent act, he may remain married to her. Needless to say, this is a difficult halacha to swallow, and poskim have recognized it as such.
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