When they stood at Sinai and said, "We shall do and we shall listen,"
a crown was placed on their heads.
Said Rabbi Abba bar Kahana in the name of Rabbi Levi:
Once Israel had accepted the Ten Commandments, one hundred twenty thousand ministering
angels came down with belts ["armor" or "belts,"] and crowns in their hands.
Two of them attended to each one of Israel;
one gave him a crown and the other girded him with a belt.
Rabbi Eleazar ben 'Arakh says that:
when the blessed Holy One came down to give Israel His Torah,
sixty myriads of ministering angels, parallel to the sixty brave myriads of Israel,
came down with Him. In their hands were weapons and crowns.
They crowned Israel with the crown of the explicit name.
For all the days until they did that deed [made the Golden Calf],
God considered them superior to the ministering angels,
and the angel of death had no rule over them.
They also did not have to attend to bodily functions like human beings.
But once they had done that deed, the blessed Holy One became angered at them, saying:
I had thought you were like angels before Me. Thus Scripture says:
"I had taken you for divine beings, sons of the Most High, all of you.
But you shall die as men do, fall as any prince" (Ps. 82:6-7).