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After the Israelites agreed to accept the Torah, what followed was the most inspiring, wonderous event in the history of the world. An entire nation stood and listened to the voice of God addressing them:
There was thunder and lightning, and a dense cloud upon the mountain, and a very loud blast of the shofar; and all the people who were in the camp trembled. Moses led the people out of the camp toward God, and they took their places at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke, for the Lord had come down upon it in fire; the smoke rose like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled violently. The sound of the shofar grew louder and louder. As Moses spoke, God answered him in thunder. The Lord came down upon Mount Sinai, on the top of the mountain… God then spoke all these words (Exodus 19:16-20:1).
The words that God spoke were the Ten Commandments. This occasion was so powerful and transcendent that the Jews were afraid they would not survive it:
All the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the shofar, and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they fell back and stood at a distance. “You speak to us,” they said to Moses, “and we will understand; but let not God speak to us, lest we die” (ibid. 20:14-15).
Moses reassured the people, explaining that this otherworldly occasion was meant to elevate them and imbue them with a deep-rooted faith, in order to overcome the evil inclination and avoid sin (ibid. 20:16). The revelation at Sinai also certified that Moses' prophetic ability was far beyond that of all other past and future prophets, since he was chosen to receive God’s Torah and transmit it to the Jewish people.
After the revelation, Moses spent 40 days on the mountain. During that time, God presented him with the tablets of the covenant (on which the Ten Commandments were engraved) and taught him the foundation and essentials of the entire Torah. Throughout the forty years that the Jews wandered in the desert, Moses continued to receive sections of the Torah from God, until the Torah's closure with the death of Moses.
