Receiving the Torah, Accepting the Torah: The Thousand-Year Gap?

Rashi on Shabbat 88a

A Strong Signal - So if they were summoned to judgement regarding why they had not fulfilled the obligation they had accepted upon themselves, they would have an answer: that they had accepted it under coercion.

Chizkuni (R' Hezekiah ben Manoah, 13th century) on Exodus 19:17

And they stood at the bottom of the mountain - Out of fear of the thunder and lightning. Here Rashi explained: that He covered them with the mountain like an [overturned] vat, And if you were to say, they already said "Na'aseh v'nishma," (Exodus 24:7), there are those who say that they had yet not accepted the Oral Torah.

Meshech Chochmah (R' Meir Simcha of Dvinsk, 1843–1926) on Exodus 19:17

And they stood at the bottom of the mountain - This teaches that [Hashem] covered them with the mountain like an [overturned] vat, which means that he showed them the glory of G-d in revealed and wonderful ways, until their natural ability to choose was actually nullified, and their souls departed from the apprehension of the glory of G-d, and they were compelled, like angels who have no ability to discern, and they saw that all creations depended totally on the acceptance of the Torah [...] And it was like forcing someone with regard to sacrifices until they say "I wish to do this," and the reason is like that of the Rambam in the laws of divorce (2:20), and these are his golden words: "(Regarding the rule that we pressure a man who does not wish to divorce his wife to do so-- a Beit Din of Israel in any place and time will beat him until he says 'I wish to do this,' and why does this not nullify the get out of coercion?) We do not say "coercion" unless someone was been pressured and pushed to do something that is not obligated from the Torah (for instance, if someone is beaten until he agrees to a commercial transaction). But if someone has been forced by his evil inclination to not fulfill a mitzvah or to sin, and he is beaten until he does the thing that is obligated of him or distances himself from something forbidden, this is not coercion; rather, he had been coercing himself through his evil thought process.

Tosafot on Shabbat 88a

A Strong Signal Regarding the Torah - And it says in Nedarim (25a) that Moshe established a covenant with Israel regarding the Torah and commandments and made them swear and oath regarding them. And they explicitly say (in Sotah 37b) that they accepted the entire Torah on Har Gerizim and Har Eival.

Rabbeinu Tam says that according to this statement, it was against their will [that they accepted the Torah], but in the days of Achashveirosh, they accepted it of their own accord, out of their love for the miracle. And the covenant they made with Yehoshua to serve Hashem only included a commitment not to serve idols, as it says (Yehoshuah 24:16), "Far be it from us to abandon Hashem to serve other gods," and that was the whole of the meaning of the matter.

Rava said: Nevertheless, they accepted it again in the days of Achashveirosh - According to Rabbi Yehuda in Megillah (7a). Regarding the question of whether Megillat Esther was written with the divine spirit, Rabbi Yehuda said in the name of Shmuel, "If I had been there [for the preceding conversation in the Gemara], I would have produced a better proof than all of theirs: that it says, 'They established/confirmed and they accepted,'--they confirmed above [in the heavenly court] that which they took upon themselves below [on earth]." [...]

[Note: in the context of this Gemara in Megillah, the pasuk seems to be talking about accepting the obligation to read the Megillah on Purim rather than accepting the whole Torah, and this reading is supported in Makot 23b. Tosafot raises this other Gemara to note the conflict.]

Chatam Sofer (R' Moses Schreiber, 1762–1839) on Shabbat 88a

They established what they had already accepted - According to the simple understanding, one can say [...] that an addition[al obligation] is not accepted by the Holy One, Blessed be He, until the existing obligation is fulfilled, and only then may a person add of his own accord. An now, if you were to think that they had not willingly accepted the Torah already, how could it be that "it was established above what they accepted upon them [below]" the additional [obligations] of Purim and Megillah [as it says in the Gemara in Megillah referenced in Tosafot above regarding the mitzvot of Purim], unless they willingly accepted the Torah of Hashem, and only then was it accepted above that they additionally fulfill the days of Purim in their days?

Ramban on Shabbat 88a

And regarding what it says regarding the aggadah, that this would be a strong notification [of coercion] regarding the Torah, but the solution is that they have since accepted the Torah in the days of Achashveirosh: this is problematic to me, because what does this acceptance do for the rest of history? If before Achashveirosh they were not commanded, why were they punished? [...]

And it seems to me that even if they had this notification [of coercion], they were only given the land so that they should fulfill the Torah, as is clear in several passages in the Torah, and it's written (Tehilim 105:44-45), "And He gave them the lands of the nations, and they took the labor of the peoples in possession that they might keep His statutes, and observe His laws." And they themselves from the beginning did not undermine any aspect of this by pointing out their mitigating claim, but rather said of the will of their own souls that they would do and listen to the word of Hashem. Therefore, when they violated the Torah, they were exiled from the land, and once they were exiled, they submitted their notification [of coercion], as it says (Ezekiel 20:32), "But what enters your mind shall not come about, what you say, 'Let us be like the nations, like the families of the lands, to serve wood and stone.'" And as it says in the aggadah (Sanhedrin 105a), "If a master has sold his slave, has one a claim upon the other?"

Therefore, when they came to the land for the second time in the days of Ezra, they stood of their own accord and accepted it, so that there should be no further grievances to raise. And so in the days of Achashveirosh, when they were saved from death, which they valued more than being redeemed from Egypt.

Kedushat Levi (R' Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev, 1740–1810) on the occasion of Purim

"And the Jews established and accepted upon themselves" (Esther 9:26), and they expounded (Shabbat 88a), "They established what they had already accepted." The desire behind this was that Mordechai was the last of the prophets, as it says in the Gemara (Yoma 29a) [that Esther is called] "Ayelet HaShachar" [because it is the end of the miracles in the Torah just as the dawn is the end of the nighttime]. We find that until Mordechai, the light was the light of the Written Torah, and from Mordechai on, when prophecy ceased, the illumination began to be the light of the Oral Torah. And from after the time of Mordechai, it was the era of the Great Assembly and the foundations of [organized] prayer. And this is "they established and accepted," that they accepted upon themselves the Oral Torah from the days of Mordechai and onward, because prophecy ceased and the the Oral Torah began to be the source of illumination, because in truth, as long as there were prophets, the prophecy was written down, and after Mordechai and the end of prophesy things were not written, and it was the beginning of the illumination of the Oral Torah.

Ohev Yisrael (R' Avraham Yehoshua Heshel of Apt, 1748-1825) on the occasions of Parshat Zachor and Purim

The sages said (Shabbat 88a), "And they stood at the bottom of the mountain" etc., that He covered them with the mountain etc. [...] What was the value in covering them with the mountain? Especially because all of Israel, with one voice, said, "Everthing that Hashem has said, we will do and we will listen!" It is clear that this is the root of the matter: It was certainly very difficult for a person steeped in the physical to accept upon himself the yoke of Torah and commandments. [...] And it is known the words of the Sages (Exodus Rabbah 15:5) that "mountains" is a term for "forefathers," because just as the mountain is the root of the lands of the earth [...], and so our holy forefathers are the roots of the spiritual world, and they are the tall mountains upon whom all of Israel's strength rests. And here, when Hashem wanted to give the Torah to Israel, he raised all of the assembly of Israel to their roots and origins, and drew them to connect with the heights in the way of their holy forefathers. [...] And he removed from them any recognition of difference between their thoughts and the Holy of Holies [...] and so it says that he covered them with the mountain, that he surrounded them with the "mountain" that is their roots in the highest holiness. And so there was no screen separating between them and their blessed and elevated creator. And so their heart desired to accept the Torah and commandments, because it was now easy in their eyes, because of the perspective of the lofty wisdom they had then, and that's why they put "we will do" before "we will hear," and accepted upon themselves and all their future offspring to fulfill the command and will of G-d. And this is what Rava means by saying that this is a strong notification [of coercion] regarding the Torah; he wanted to say, according to our explanation, that if this is the case, the Jews will have a complaint of coercion afterwards. Because after the moment of accepting the Torah, when they were at such a great level, they were certainly in a frame of mind to happily fulfill the Torah and commandments forever. But immediately after the moment at Sinai, the children of Israel fell from their level [...] and it became impossible for a person to be so connected to Torah and to observe its commandments in a way appropriate to the state of mind of the moment of acceptance. And this is a strong reason to invalidate the commitment. But even so, they accepted it in the days of Achashveirosh, which was a time of great pain and distance from G-d, and even so, they accepted it upon their souls, even though they were in a very lowly state, and committed to do all that was written in the holy Torah. And so we find that there was no longer any mitigating claim about the acceptance of the Torah after they accepted it out of the desire of their hearts.