Standing Beneath Mount Sinai

And Moses brought the people forth out of the camp to meet God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain.                                         Exodus 19: 17

            Our Sages understood the verse in its literal meaning (“they stood beneath the mountain”) and comment:

This teaches that God held the mountain over them as a tub and said to them “if you accept the Torah, fine, if not, there will be your burial place.

                               Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 88a

            Understanding the Sages’ comment literally implies that the Children of Israel were forced to accept Torah.

            Meshech Ḥochma (Rabbi Meir Simcha of Dvinsk, 1860 - 1926) comments that, indeed, the Divine revelation at Sinai was so intense that the Israelites’ natural free will was suspended and they had to accept the Torah.

            Rabbi Dr. Isidore Epstein presents a somewhat moderated version of the Meshech Ḥochma’s comment, and says the Sages’ intention is this: if the People of Israel (or any other people) could experience the most intense divine revelation of all time and remain unaffected, they are worthy of dying.

            My father explained our Sages’ intention based upon the Midrashic approach that the creation of the world was conditioned upon accepting Torah. Thus, had we stood at Mount Sinai and refused to accept Torah, not only would that have become the burial place of the Israelites, but the entire universe would have been returned to tohu vavohu (“unformed and void” [Genesis 1:2])