Our parasha tells of Ma‘amad Har Sinai, the climactic culmination of Creation when the bënei Yisra’él became the nation of Israel, accepting as their constitution the Torah, both the blueprint and purpose of Creation, as we learn: קב"ה אסתכל באורייתא וברא עלמא (“The Holy One, Blessed is He, looked into the Torah and created the world”; זה"ק ח"ב קס"א:); אם לא בריתי יומם ולילה חקות שמים וארץ לא שמתי (“If My covenant is not [observed] by day and by night, I shall not have set the laws of heaven and earth”; Jeremiah XXXIII, 25); אם ישראל מקבלין את התורה מוטב ואם לאו אני אחזיר אתכם לתהו ובהו (“If Israel accept the Torah, [Creation] becomes good, and if not, I shall return [Creation] to chaos!”; שבת פ"ח. וע"ע זה"ק ח"ב ר. וח"ג ז., במדבר רבה פי"ג סי' ט"ו ועבודה זרה ג.).
We are therefore not surprised to find that the event has a very dramatic mise-en-scène: a shofar blast growing ever louder, cataclysmic displays of thunder and lightning, וכל העם ראים את הקולת ואת הלפידם ואת קול השפר ואת ההר עשן וירא העם וינעו ויעמדו מרחק (“And all the people [were] seeing the voices and the flashes and the voice of the shofar and the smoke-wreathed mountain; and the people saw, and they moved and they stood at a distance”; XX, 15).
Nature was turned on its head once again, and sounds became visible. It was undoubtedly a very great miracle, but it begs the question: Why was this particular wonder appropriate to Mattan Torah? Pondering the question, we review the wording of our verse, and note the participle in the first clause, “seeing”, and the apparently unnecessary repetition of the verb in the second clause, “and the people saw.” What does that signify?
B.
The world knows the Divine pronouncements made at Mt. Sinai as the “Ten Commandments”. However, anyone endowed with a חוש חי לשפה העברית, a “living sense of the Hebrew language” (as one of my rebbe’im was wont to say), knows that the Hebrew word for commandment” is mitzva, of which there are 613, not ten (as we learn from Deuteronomy XXXIII, 4, תורה צוה לנו משה, “Moshe commanded us Torah”; the gimatriya or numerical value of Torah is 611, and two additional commandments, “I am Ha-Shem your G-d” and “You shall have no other gods” were taught to Israel directly by the Al-Mighty; מכות כ"ג:).
Since the mitzvoth are scattered throughout the written Torah, we refer to these introductory pronouncements as the ‘Asereth ha-Dibbëroth, the “Ten Utterances,” from the introductory verse: וידבר אלקים את כל הדברים האלה (“And G-d spoke [va-yëdabbér] all these words [ha-dëvarim ha-élleh]”; XX, 1). The verb dibbér, speak, is not a simple (qal) verb; it is in the factitive pi‘él conjugation. A factitive verb brings into being a state of existence; for instance, if one is mëchaddésh something, the result is a chadash, a new thing; if one is mëchakkém, the result is a chacham, a wise person; if one is mëqatzér, the result is a qatzar, a short thing. The pattern is clear, and examples could be multiplied. So, if one is mëdabbér, the result is a davar. As that person possessed of a lively sense of the Hebrew language will tell you, davar simultaneously means “word” and “thing,” a physical object.
With this in mind, we note that Rashi says that Israel saw את הקולות היוצאין מפי הגבורה (“the voices emanating from the mouth of the Al-Mighty”), and we turn to the Këli Yaqar.
C.
The Këli Yaqar writes: שכל דבור ודבור שיצא מפי הקב"ה מיד נתגשם אותו דבור והי' בו כ"כ ממשות עד שהיו רואין באויר כל האותיות וכאילו הי' הכל כתוב לפניהם (“that each and every dibbur which came out of the mouth of the Holy One, Blessed is He, immediately became manifest, and there was in it so much substantiality that they were seeing in the air all of the letters, as if everything was written before them”). He adduces evidence of this from Scripture: בדבר ד' שמים נעשו (“By Ha-Shem’s word the heavens were made”; Psalms XXXIII, 6), evidence שכל דבור שיוצא מפי הקב"ה בורא בריאה חדשה (“that every dibbur which comes out of the mouth of the Holy One, Blessed is He, creates a new creation”). ולפיכך ארז"ל שכששבר משה הלוחות האותיות פורחות ואם לא הי' ממשות באותיות איך היו פורחות וראי' גדולה מזו שבלוחות האחרונות כתיב "וכתבתי על הלחת את הדברים אשר היו על הלחת הראשונים" כדברים אשר היו לא נאמר אלא את הדברים אשר היו למה שאותן אותיות שהיו פורחות מן לוחות ראשונות נקבעו בשניות וא"כ וודאי הי' ממשות באותן אותיות (“And therefore Chazal said that when Moshe broke the tablets [Exodus XXXIII, 19] the letters [went] flying. and if there was no substantiality in the letters, how did they go flying? And a stronger inference than this [may be drawn from the fact] that concerning the last tablets it is written: ‘And I shall write the words which were on the first tablets’ [XXXIV, 1] – ‘like the words which were’ is not said, but ‘the words which were.’ Why? Because the very letters which had been flying from the first tablets were affixed in the second ones; and if so, certainly there was substantiality in those letters”).
The Al-Mighty’s koach ha-dibbur, His factitive “speech,” functioned to bring the originally metaphysical words of the universe’s blueprint into physical existence. These now physical words were affixed to the tablets, והלחת מעשה אלקים המה והמכתב מכתב אלקים (“and the tablets were the work of G-d and the writing was the writing of G-d”; XXXII, 15). It was these dëvarim, brought into being through dibbur, which the people saw: קול אלקים המדבר אתם אותן קולות ראו בעיניהם (“the voice of G-d speaking with them, these voices they saw with their eyes”).
The direct voice of G-d is an ultimately terrifying thing. Chazal tell us that, on hearing the first word, the nëshamoth of those present, overcome with the overwhelming longing to return to their Divine source, left their bodies and they died. Restored to life, the next word did the same; and the next, and the next, and the next....(עיי' פרקי דר' אליעזר פמ"א וזה"ק ח"א כ"ח:). It was this, says the Këli Yaqar, which prompted the people to beg Moshe: דבר אתה עמנו ונשמעה ואל ידבר עמנו אלקים פן נמות (“You speak with us and we will listen, and let G-d not speak with us, lest we die”; XX, 16).
As the Këli Yaqar points out, one is generally able to see things at a longer distance than to hear them. This, he says, is the significance of the second verb: That the sight of the letters enabled the people to move back out of the effective ranger of that awesome and terrible voice.
For his part, the Ha‘améq Davar suggests that the repetition of the verb signifies Israel’s perception שהוא יותר מלפי כחם באמת. וה"ז כמו שהאדם נושא משא לפי שעה יותר מכפי כחו ואינו יכול לעמוד אלא מתנועע תמיד. כך הי' משא הקדושה עליהם יותר מכחם עד שנעו ממעמדם (“that [the experience] was truly beyond their strength. And this is like a man who for a short time bears a weight beyond his strength, and he cannot stand but is always moving. So was the burden of sanctity upon them beyond their strength, such that they moved from their position”).
D.
A wonderful suggestion which I heard years ago in the name of the second Gerer Rebbe, the Sëfath Emeth, offers a deeper explanation of why they were permitted to see the words being uttered, which has special relevance for our time.
We live in an age in which the tools of faith are being sorely misapplied. In Western Civilization, a very large number of people have lost all faith in ultimate things, and instead have come to put their faith in the claims of human science, which are neither eternal nor ultimate, but inherently provisional and ever-changing. Nonetheless, all too often, even trained scientists (who surely should know better) cling to positions which they have taken as though they were tenets of a religious faith.
In the Muslim world, we see that the moral ambiguity resulting from the West’s loss of faith in ultimate things is being used as an excuse by fanatical ideologues to warp religious concepts in such a way as to justify appalling and seldom-equaled savagery, so that “martyrs” (shahīdūn in Arabic, which literally means “witnesses”), for instance, become self-immolating mass-murderers.
The greater number of the ‘Asereth ha-Dibbëroth are negative statements, prohibitions of immoral acts: לא תרצח לא תנאף לא תגנב לא תענה ברעך עד שקר (“You will not murder, you will not fornicate, you will not steal, you will not bear false witness against your fellow”) and so on. As our person possessed of the lively sense of the Hebrew language will attest, the negative particle in each of these phrases, lo’, spelt lamed-alef, is identical in sound to the word lo, spelt lamed-vav, which means “for him” (this is also evident from the niqqud of the words in the verse quoted, in that the negative particle removes the dagesh from the initial tav of the verb, an indication that the alef is silent).
Says the Sëfath Emeth, the reason the words were visible was so that there not be any doubt whatever that G-d had said, for instance, “You shall not murder,” and NOT, chas vë-shalom, “You shall murder for Him.” The principles of yashruth and tëmimuth, of straight-forward honesty and simplicity in the acceptance and application of religious precepts, were thus articulated explicitly at the very moment that religion in its true sense entered the world.
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