The Biblical Account:
Shemot 19: 16-22 (p. 405 in the Stone Chumash)
Shemot 24: 7-18 (p. 440)
(שמות יט, יז) ויתיצבו בתחתית ההר א"ר אבדימי בר חמא בר חסא מלמד שכפה הקב"ה עליהם את ההר כגיגית ואמר להם אם אתם מקבלים התורה מוטב ואם לאו שם תהא קבורתכם א"ר אחא בר יעקב מכאן מודעא רבה לאורייתא אמר רבא אעפ"כ הדור קבלוה בימי אחשורוש דכתיב (אסתר ט, כז) קימו וקבלו היהודים קיימו מה שקיבלו כבר
The Torah says, “And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet God; and they stood at the lowermost part of the mount” (Exodus 19:17). Rabbi Avdimi bar Ḥama bar Ḥasa said: the verse teaches that the Holy One, Blessed be He, overturned the mountain above the Jews like a tub, and said to them: If you accept the Torah, excellent, and if not, there will be your burial. Rav Aḥa bar Ya’akov said: From here there is a substantial caveat to the obligation to fulfill the Torah. The Jewish people can claim that they were coerced into accepting the Torah, and it is therefore not binding. Rava said: Even so, they again accepted it willingly in the time of Ahasuerus, as it is written: “The Jews ordained, and took upon them, and upon their seed, and upon all such as joined themselves unto them” (Esther 9:27), and he taught: The Jews ordained what they had already taken upon themselves through coercion at Sinai.
הלך וישב בסוף שמונה שורות ולא היה יודע מה הן אומרים תשש כחו כיון שהגיע לדבר אחד אמרו לו תלמידיו רבי מנין לך אמר להן הלכה למשה מסיני נתיישבה דעתו
Moses went and sat at the end of the eighth row in Rabbi Akiva’s study hall and did not understand what they were saying. Moses’ strength waned, as he thought his Torah knowledge was deficient. When Rabbi Akiva arrived at the discussion of one matter, his students said to him: My teacher, from where do you derive this? Rabbi Akiva said to them: It is a halakha transmitted to Moses from Sinai. When Moses heard this, his mind was put at ease.
R. Mordechai Yosef of Izbitz, Mei Ha-Shiloah, Parshat Yitro (19th c. Poland)
“I (anokhi) am the Lord your God.” The verse does not state “ani,” for if it stated “ani” that would imply that the Holy One Blessed Be He revealed then the totality of His light to Israel, precluding the possibility of further delving into His words, for everything would already be revealed. The letter “khaf” [of anokhi], however, denotes that the revelation is not complete, but is rather an estimation and comparison to the light which God will reveal in the future.
R. Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man
Revelation means that the thick silence which fills the endless distance between God and the human mind was pierced, and man was told that God is concerned with the affairs of man; that not only does man need God, God is also in need of man...At Sinai we have learned that spiritual values are not only aspirations in us, but a response to a transcendent appeal to us...(p. 196-197).
There is a partnership of God and Israel in regard to both the world and the Torah: He created the earth and we till the soil; He gave us the text and we refine and complete it. The Bible is a seed, God is the sun, but we are the soil. Every generation is expected to bring forth new understanding and new realization. The word is the word of God, and its understanding He gave unto man (p. 274).
Dr. Tamar Ross, Expanding the Palace of Torah
The fluid notion of Torah...presents the Sinai revelation of God's word as the initiator of a series of revelations in the form of inspired interpretations throughout the ages. The ideal meaning of the Sinaitic revelation is eked out only with these accumulated interpretations. The various strata are then absorbed as an integral part of the primary text, expanding upon and sometimes even transforming its original meaning, while forever remaining rooted in its precise language and frames of reference...Through this unified prism, we look out onto the world, and we understand it too as an extension of the text (p. 201).
R. Eliezer Berkovits, God, Man and History
Religion does not reduce man to being a puppet of God; it elevates him to his highest dignity by enabling him to acknowledge God in free commitment. The "fellowship" is initiated by God in the encounter; it is sustained after the encounter in the ever-renewed act of faith by man. To make this possible, God must hide--during the encounter, to safeguard man's very survival; in history, to protect the spiritual independence of man in making his decision for God; and finally, He must remain rather elusive to the conclusive grasp of reason, so that man may retain his intellectual freedom when inquiring after Him. Where there is compulsion, there can be no fellowship (p. 49).