Parashat Mishpatim 6768

To Moshe He said, "Go up to God, you and Aharon, Nadav and Avihu, and seventy elders of Israel, and bow down from afar.(24:1)



Questions

Rashi: This section was actually said before the Ten Commandments were given. God told Moshe "Go up" (v.1) on the fourth of Sivan.

Be'er Yitzchak: Rashi explains in his commentary to verse 6 that Moshe's sprinkling of blood (mentioned in the verse) entered the Jewish people into a covenant with God. It does not make sense to say that this covenant began after the giving of the Torah. Therefore, Rashi came to the conclusion that this section was said before the giving of the Torah.

Ramban: According to Rashi the sequence of verses is extremely disorderly. Therefore, in my opinion, this section was said exactly where it was written, i.e. after the Giving of the Torah and after God had told Moshe all the civil laws that we have read above. This passage then tells us how Moshe went up to God one more time before he told the people all the laws he had received. The Jewish people responded positively (v.3) stating that they were willing to observe all of the laws.



The Torah's Perplexing Order (v.1)



Rashi writes that the above passage (24 :1-11) was said before the giving of the Torah in Parashat Yitro. While he may have good reason for this statement (as Be'er Yitzchak argues) it nevertheless results in the Torah being written in a very perplexing manner.

According to Rashi, after the Torah is given in Parshat Yitro, we then jump to the period when Moshe spent forty days and nights on the mountain, during which time the civil laws of Parashat Mishpatim were given over. Then, in the current chapter, we switch back to before the giving of the Torah. And then, only twelve verses later, we jump back again to after the Torah is given. To make matters even more complex we then leap to after the incident with the Golden Calf to read Parshiyos Teruman, and Tetzaveh. It appears to be no wonder therefore that Ramban and a host of other commentators found Rashi's chronology too much to swallow! Is there any way we could explain, according to Rashi, the motivating factor why these accounts were written in such a peculiar order?



The Twofold Implication of Torah

On the first occasion which Moshe ascended Mount Sinai, before the giving of the Torah (on the second of Sivan), God made the following "mission statement": "If you listen to Me and keep My covenant, you will be a precious treasure to Me among all the peoples" (Yitro 19:3).

Here we see that the giving of the Torah has a twofold implication:

"If you listen to Me"---observance of the mitzvos, which were given (initiated) by God.

"And keep My covenant"---general commitment to God, initiated by man.



After this "mission statement" was made, God divided the narrative of the giving of the Torah into two sections:

First He dealt with the mitzvos and their observance. This included the giving of the Torah together with preparations, and the list of mitzvos in Parshat Mishpatim up to the end of chapter 23.

Afterwards, in the current chapter, He described the second element of the Giving of the Torah-the covenant between the Jewish people and God. For this, we must retrace the steps to the preparations for the giving of the Torah once again, to read how the Jewish people willfully accepted upon themselves their relationship with God (exclaiming, "All the words that God has spoken we will do!"-v.3). We then read (in v.4-8) how they consolidated that commitment by offering a sacrifice.

Thus in the final analysis, the Torah did not write the narrative of the giving of the Torah in chronological order, as it wished instead to divide the narrative into two parts which each stress a different aspect of the Torah's purpose; observance of the mitzvoth (God's initiative) and commitment to God (man's initiative).