ואל משה אמר, “and He had said to Moses:” this paragraph up to and including verse 4: 'את כל דברי ה, “all the words of the Lord,” were said to him on the fourth day of Sivan, [two days before the revelation, Ed.] as I have explained at the time. (19,15) According to the plain meaning of the text, an angel had said this to Moses at this time; the text is abbreviated, and is one of many such verses in the Torah.

ויבא משה, “Moses arrived, etc;” in the camp of the Israelites, after descending from the Mountain. He proceeded to tell the people all that G-d had told him, commencing with the words: (19,4) אתם ראיתם up to this verse.” There follows: (24,4) וישכם בבקר until ויאכלו וישתו, “they ate and they drank” (verse 11) something that occurred on the fifth day of Sivan as I have explained on the relevant verse in Parshat Yitro. (19,15)

ושתים עשרה מצבה, “and 12 stone pillars;” this refers to G-d’s commandment to mark off the area at the bottom of Mount Sinai beyond which none of the people were allowed to approach. (19,12) 3 pillars in the east for the three tribes encamped there, three pillars in the south, the west and the north, as they were encamped also while in the desert. Some commentators say that Moses placed 12 stone pillars on the east on the altar as a symbol that all twelve tribes were completely content with maintaining the covenant with Hashem. We find a parallel to this in what the prophet Elijah did on Mount Carmel: ויקחו שתים עשרה אבנים למספר בני ישראל, “they took twelve stones to symbolize the twelve tribes of Israel.” (Kings I 18,31.)

נערי בני ישראל, “young men of the Children of Israel.” They were young lads on the threshold of becoming of age when they would be eligible to observe the commandments. According to a different view, these were all firstborns of their respective families.

ויעלו עולות, “they presented burntofferings.” They meant to fulfill what G-d had told Moses at the burning bush that the Israelites would in due course worship him at that Mountain. (Exodus 3,12)

וישם באגנות, “he placed it in basins.” Rashi explains that we learn from this verse that it requires three steps to convert to Judaism fully: circumcision, immersion in a ritual bath, and the sprinkling of blood. And when the Talmud in tractate Yevamot folio 46 stated that our forefathers were circumcised but did not immerse themselves in a ritual bath, we must say that this refers to our forefathers Avraham, Yitzchok, and Yaakov. [How could they have done so since the Torah had not been given in their time as yet? Ed.]

זרק על המזבח, “he sprinkled on the altar.” He did so before reading out the declaration for the people to recite after him. After having read out the declaration he sprinkled the other half of the sacrificial blood on the people.

ויקח ספר הברית, “He took hold of the Book of the Covenant;” It is well known that the Torah was not written in chronological sequential order. The Mechilta of Rabbi Yishmael, on the 19th chapter of the Book of Exodus, has proven this beyond any question. Among other proofs the author has cited is Leviticus 25,2, where the Torah wrote: ושבתה הארץ, that the soil of the land of Israel is to observe a year of lying fallow, (immediately after the Israelites entering that land) and the Torah proceeds to lists the laws pertaining to the sh’mittah cycles followed by the Jubilee cycles, concluding with 26,46: “these are the statutes and social laws that G-d has given as applying to the Jewish people all of which He had revealed to Moses at Mount Sinai.” The Jewish people heard and accepted all the laws including the blessings and curses applying to those who observed them and those who would disobey them, after which Moses took the remainder of the blood and sprinkled it upon them, as the seal of the covenant. He told the people to listen to detailed instructions of these laws starting on the day following. [In other words, the Jews had already bound themselves to be obedient to the Torah’s laws even though they had not yet been written down. There is considerable discussion about the term ספר הברית, here whether what was already written in there at the time Moses read from it was subsequently written in the Torah out of context or not. According to our author’s interpretation of the Mechilta when the Israelites said their famous: נעשה ונשמע generally understood as their giving G-d a blank cheque, this was not so, they simply expressed the wish to learn the details of what Moses had already read out to them. Ed.]

הנה דם הברית, “here is the blood, the symbol of the covenant;”The blood of the covenant is divided into two halves, as always when a covenant is made between two parties. We know this already from the first covenant made between G-d and Avraham in Genesis chapter 15, when Avraham divided all the slaughtered animals except for the bird.[Nowadays when two parties conclude an agreement each receives a copy of the text, and each signs both copies. Ed.] The prophet Jeremiah, in Jeremiah 34,18, refers to העגל אשר כרתו לשנים ויעברו בין בתריו, “the calf which they cut in two so as to pass between the halves.” The reason why in Genesis15,17, G-d is not described as passing between the pieces Avraham had cut, was His way of indicating to Avraham that there would be a price to pay in blood for violating this covenant. This idea has also been referred to again in Leviticus 26,25 in the tochachah, the chapter of dire warnings, where G-d describes His reaction to when the Jewish people become guilty of violating this covenant.

ויראו את אלוקי ישראל, “they saw a vision of the Lord, G-d of Israel.” This was a prophetic vision.

כמעשה לבנת ספיר, “like a brick make of sapphire.” There are two kinds of sapphire, the white kind and the black kind. The “white, (bright)” kind is similar in colour to azureblue; seeing that the majority of people have never seen a sapphire in their lives, the Torah has to describe it by comparing it to a phenomenon familiar to everyone, i.e. a cloudless sky in which the sun shines brightly. We find such a description also in Job 37,21: ורוח עברה ותטהרם, “until the wind comes and clears the sky from the clouds.”Rabbi Akiva is quoted as referring to when Pharaoh forced the Israelites to deliver twice the normal amount of bricks, by thus interpreting the word תוכן in Exodus 5,18. They had refused to continue to supply the Israelites with the straw that served as reinforcement for mud bricks, so that the Israelites had to forage for them in the fields. They gathered straw full of thorns and thistles and the skins of their feet were pierced by that straw, blood streaming from their wounds, and was mixed with the loam. (The raw material of the bricks.) According to this Midrash, the source of which is not known, a descendant of Metushelach, called Rachel in that Midrash, experienced extreme difficulty and pain while about to give birth, her birthstool, מלבן, a rectangular mouldlike contraption, becoming mired in loam and thistles and she being bloodied all over. When the archangel Michael became aware of this result of the barbaric treatment of the Israelites by the decree of Pharaoh, he took a brick, לבנה, same root in Hebrew, and deposited this brick made of sapphire beneath the throne of G-d to remind Him of how His people were being treated. It remained there until the destruction of the Temple due to the people’s sins when G-d or one of His angels flung it back down to earth, as G-d had no further use for such reminders.[I had debated with myself if to translate and explain the author’s insertion of part of this Midrash, but decided in favour, as it illustrates better than prose how our sages view both the angels, and G-d’s reaction to excessive torture of His people, but also excessive disloyalty by His people to their covenant with G-d. Ed.] (In his commentary on our verse by Rabbi Menachem Kasher of sainted memory, in his Torah shleymah, the interested reader can read up on this under the heading #88. (With the help of this Midrash, the line: ותחת רגליו כמעשה לבנת הספיר וכעצם השמים לטוהר, “and underneath His feet the mould of a brick pure as the finest sapphire, like a cloudless pure sky,” becomes more meaningful.)

לא שלח ידו, “He did not raise His hand;” G-d had reason to punish the people who had been granted this vision because they carried on as if this was nothing extraordinary, by eating and drinking. [According to this interpretation, at this time, immediately before the giving of the Torah, G-d did not wish to spoil the joyous mood of the people. An alternate approach to these lines: all the Torah tells us is that in spite of having been granted such visions, and one could have expected that this would have made them temporarily like angels, like Moses who on Mount Sinai went for 40 days and nights without food or drink, these “nobles” of the people had not attained that level of prophecy. They could continue to eat and drink without thereby harming themselves.

ויחזו את האלוהים, according to Rabbi Tanchuma, (Vayikra Rabbah 20,10) they had behaved arrogantly craning their necks, etc., acting inappropriately and trying to translate their vision into something terrestrial, such as physically enjoying food and drink.

ויאכלו וישתו, “they ate and drank,” just as we know from Avraham, Yitzchok and Yaakov, that when they made a pact with human beings, they invariably sealed it by having a festive meal with their partner. (Ibn Ezra) This whole verse was inserted in the Torah in honour of Moses who, when experiencing prophetic visions did not need to sustain his body by food and drink, as he had attained the level of disembodied beings who do not depend on such means to renew energy they had spent.

ויאכלו, “they ate;” they ate of the peace offerings mentioned in verse 5 of our chapter.

ויהושע משרתו, “whereas his personal valet, Joshua, etc.;” he remained seated at the bottom of the Mountain until his master would return; in the meantime he was fed daily by a portion of manna.

ואל הזקנים, “and to the elders, the ones who had enjoyed the vision of the Divine,’אמר, “he had already said;” שבו לנו, “remain seated here for us;” the “us” refers to Moses and Joshua. בזה, “inside the camp;” Joshua had been permitted to approach more closely to the bottom of the Mountain than either Aaron, Chur, and the seventy elders. This is why Joshua had been unaware of what had transpired with the golden calf until he returned together with Moses.

מי בעל דברים, “anyone who wishes to get back money or chattels from his neighbour;” the reason the singular mode is used here when discussing litigation, is that the party in possession of disputed property will always remain silent.

ויכס הענן את ההר, "The cloud covered the Mountain.” It had already been covered on the previous day, the sixth of Sivan.

וישכון כבוד ה, “the glory of the Lord abode;” actually it had already settled on the Mountain, as we know from Exodus 19,20: וירד ה׳ על הר סיני, “the Lord descended onto Mount Sinai;” it had also stated that “Moses had approached the thick cloud which enveloped the higher regions of the Mountain beyond which was G-d’s presence.” (Exodus 20,18).

ויעל אל ההר, “he ascended towards the Mountain.” He ascended all the way to the top of the Mountain. As soon as he had completed his ascent he was told Parshat B’har, the portion dealing primarily with laws applicable only in the Holy Land. If the people were to hear these laws first, their desire to get to that land would become reinforced. After all, taking possession of that land was the reward for observing the laws of the Torah.

ארבעים יום וארבעים לילה, “forty days and forty nights.” These days commenced with the morning of the seventh day of Sivan, and ended with the morning of the seventeenth day of Tammuz.