“(Moses) took the Book of the Covenant and read it aloud to the people. They replied, ‘All that God has declared, we will do and we will listen’ ” (Exodus 24:7)
It is the opinion of the Talmud, and Rashi (ibid.) concurs, that the events described in the text above occurred before the Giving of the Torah. This means that the Jewish people’s saying “We will do and we will listen” happened before the events at Sinai. What we need to understand, then, is why the Torah narrative places this event after the Giving of the Torah. Even though, as is well understood, there is no chronological “before” or “after” in the Torah, nevertheless the juxtaposition of these events in the text must surely be teaching us something.
Rashi explains that the Book of the Covenant that Moses read aloud to the people at that time was the story from Creation to the Giving of the Torah. Why then did the Jews, upon hearing only this much of the narrative, when Moses had read only Genesis and the first chapters of Exodus, feel moved to reply, “All that God has declared, we will do and we will listen,” as though they were receiving the whole Torah? Furthermore, the declaration “We will do and we will listen” is everywhere assumed to be our acceptance of the entire Torah text. So, we need to understand why it was that after such a partial reading of the Torah, we declared “We will do and we will listen” to all the subsequent Torah?
We learn the following in the Talmud (Shabbath 88a) about the verse “And they stood under the mountain” (Exodus 19:17): “This teaches us that the Holy Blessed One tore out the mountain at its roots and held it over them like a barrel, and said to them, ‘If you accept the Torah, well and good; if not, there shall be your burial site.’ R. Acha b. Yaakov observed, ‘This furnishes a strong protest against the Torah.’ Rabba responded, ‘Yet even so, they reaffirmed their acceptance, voluntarily, in the days of Ahasuerus, as it is written, “(The Jews) accepted, and observed . . .” (Esther 9:27) which means they reaffirmed what they had previously accepted.’ ”
In their commentary on this talmudic passage, the Tosaphists conclude that there is a distinction between our acceptance of the Torah per se, and our commitment to observe and fulfill all its demands. Because we did accept the Torah voluntarily in the covenanted ceremony described in the text above, it is untrue for us to claim that the Torah was forced upon us. Nevertheless, we still had the right to protest that we had been coerced to commit to the observance of all the Torah’s commandments. This latter claim held true until we voluntarily reaffirmed our commitment to the Torah in the time of Ahasuerus.
Perhaps, therefore, the phrasing of our speech, putting “we will do” before “we will listen,” was a way of saying that even if we were presented with an opportunity to protest that we had been forced to commit to the observance of the Torah, we still promised to fulfill its dictates nonetheless.
The question then is this: How did they know, during the ceremony described in the text above, which happened before the Giving of the Torah, that they would be forced into committing to observe the Torah? The answer is this: From Moses’ reading of the book of Genesis—the story of the patriarchs, and the covenants that God made with them—the Jewish people realized that they were going to be forced into this commitment, even under duress. They heard how God had committed to the patriarchs, as it is written (Deut. 4:27): “And because He loved your fathers, and chose their descendants after them . . .”
If this was the case, then placing the narrative of the declaration “All that God has declared, we will do and we will listen” in the text after the Giving of the Torah has a definite purpose. It is a way of telling us that the Jewish people intended to commit voluntarily to the entire Torah they would receive at Sinai, even if they were also forced to commit to it under duress.
Perhaps this is why Moses sprinkled half the blood of the people’s sacrifice on the altar before they answered “We will do and we will listen,” and the other half after they made their declaration (Exodus 24:6–8). The sprinkling of the blood on the people was the sealing of a covenant, as Moses said, “This is the blood of the covenant that God is making with you regarding all these words.” (ibid.) God was binding Himself in an irrevocable covenant to rescue the Jewish people whether they were deserving of His salvation or whether, God forbid, they were not—and we were committing to observe the Torah even when we had the right to protest that we were being coerced.
The covenant is always reciprocal. Because we said “We will do and we will listen” regarding observance of the Torah, even when we had the right to protest that we were being coerced, God was forced into the same kind of covenant. He must save us, even when protesting that He is being forced into so doing. And we, whether we are bound to do so or have the right to protest, will always worship God.