The Talmud interprets the words “And they stood at the bottom of the mountain” to mean that at the giving of the Torah, G-d raised Mt. Sinai over the Jewish people and said: “If you accept the Torah, good; if not, you will be summarily buried beneath this mountain.” “This,” concludes the Talmud, “furnished a strong disclaimer against the acceptance of the Torah,” until the Jews willingly reaccepted it after the Purim miracle, almost 1,000 years later.
Why was this coercion necessary? When Moshe told them that they would be given the Torah, had Bnei Yisrael not willingly committed themselves to its complete observance, proclaiming, “We will fulfill and we will listen?”
The Talmud’s assertion must therefore be understood to mean not that Bnei Yisrael were coerced into accepting the Torah against their will, but that their willing acceptance itself was coerced.
A person who recognizes and understands that a life of Torah observance is the ultimate blessing, and that the opposite is true of a life devoid of Torah, would find it virtually impossible to refuse to accept the Torah. Bnei Yisrael, however, having left Egypt a mere 50 days earlier, could not have independently undergone such an extreme paradigm shift—from the influence of Egypt, “the shame of the earth,” to an appreciation of the Torah’s holy ideals. Thus, their willful and unconditional affirmation to live by the Torah was the result of being shown from Above that a life without Torah is no life at all; it was not an ideal that they had come to appreciate on their own yet.
When the G-dly revelation at Sinai ended, Bnei Yisrael faced their prior commitment, but without the level of appreciation for the Torah that they had been exposed to when they made that commitment. Observing the Torah now, without that inspiration, was thus much more difficult than it had been at the moment of their original acceptance. “This,” says the Talmud, “furnished a strong disclaimer against the acceptance of the Torah,” until they reaccepted it later on their own initiative.
—Likkutei Sichos, vol. 26, p. 424
