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In Parshat Yitro, Perek 19 pasuk 9, Hashem tells Moshe His plan for Matan Torah: "הנה אנכי בא אליך בעב הענן בעבור ישמע העם בדברי עמך וגם בך יאמינו לעולם" - behold, I will come to YOU (Moshe) in the thickness of cloud, so that the nation will hear Me speaking with YOU and also they will believe in you forever. It is clear from the wording of this pasuk that God’s original plan is simply to speak to Bnei Yisrael through Moshe as an intermediary; He is not really going to communicate with the nation directly.

However, 2 psukim later, God seems to change His plan. Here, in pasuk 11, He tells Moshe to instruct the people to sanctify and prepare themselves because in three days "ירד ה' לעיני כל העם על הר סיני" – Hashem will descend in the sight of the entire people on Mount Sinai. In addition, the first person language of the first 2 commandments clearly confirms God’s direct communication with the nation.

What makes God change His plan? According to Rashi, the answer can be found at the end of pasuk 9. There the Torah states that Moshe related “the words of the people”(divrei ha'am) to Hashem. What exactly were these “divrei haam”? Rashi explains that “divrei ha'am” refers to Bnei Yisrael’s request that Hashem speak to them directly rather than through an intermediary. In other words, although God originally planned on speaking to the nation only through an intermediary, He changes his plan based on Bnei Yisrael’s request! Hashem truly believes that Bnei Yisrael are on the level that they deserve such a close relationship to Him, and therefore He agrees to give it to them.

The only prerequisite that Hashem vehemently insists upon, however, is putting up a fence around Har Sinai to prevent the nation from running up the mountain. In psukim 12, 21, and 24, Hashem repeatedly reminds Moshe to warn the people that if they ascend the mountain, they shall die!

God's insistence about this fence is quite surprising in light of how the events actually play out. Not only do the people not attempt to run up the mountain but perek 20 pasuk 15 tells us "וירא העם וינעו ויעמדו מרחוק " - Bnei Yisrael saw (the smoky mountain, thunder, and lightning) and trembled and stood from afar.” Why would God insist upon this fence if in reality Bnei Yisrael end up cowering in fear and running away from the mountain?!

Hashem’s insistence upon a fence highlights that Hashem didn’t just agree to the nation’s request simply to satisfy them, but rather He had full faith that Bnei Yisrael could attain such a closeness to Him that it might even result in a sudden uncontrollable desire to run up the mountain. On the one hand, Bnei Yisrael had this desire for closeness to Hashem, but at the end of the day they were too overwhelmed by God’s proximity that they ran away, begging for Moshe to be an intermediary instead.

We see from the flow of the text that there is a constant back and forth of striving for intimacy with Hashem and being overwhelmed by the intensity of God’s kedusha. This constant tug of war is very similar to that of the back and forth struggle that seminary and yeshiva students encounter this year. We crave an intimate relationship with Hashem, yet sometimes when we feel we are so close to Him, we become overwhelmed and consequently retreat. Perhaps we can learn some valuable lessons for how to handle this from Matan Torah. It is not entirely clear from the text at what point Am Yisrael make their request for Moshe to serve as an intermediary. It appears after all ten of the Ten Commandments but there are a number of indications that it may have occurred earlier, after the second of the Ten Commandments, and the Torah just didn’t want to break up the Aseret HaDibrot by presenting this request in the middle. This ambiguity makes it unclear how many of the commandments Hashem related directly before Moshe took over. Did He directly say all 10 or just the first 2, which are written in the first person?

Perhaps Hashem doesn't specify when He stopped addressing the nation directly and when Moshe took over because He doesn't want us to believe that there is a maximum that a person can achieve in connecting with God. Therefore Hashem intentionally makes it unclear at what point Am Yisrael couldn’t handle more in order to leave Bnei Yisrael with a sense of limitless potential in regards to connecting to God - we should always strive for more and more is always possible!

Matan Torah teaches us that we must constantly strive to attain ever increasing intimacy with Hashem. Instead of retreating when we become overwhelmed by our closeness to Him, we must simply put up “fences” to keep the distance respectable, while still continuing to achieve greater closeness with our Creator.