“Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the boys. In its shade I delighted and I sat, and its fruit was sweet to my palate” (Song of Songs 2:3). “Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest,” Rabbi Huna and Rabbi Aḥa in the name of Rabbi Yosei ben Zimra: Just as this apple tree, everyone flees from it during the heat, and why is that, because it does not have shade to enable one to sit in its shade, so too, the nations of the world fled from the shadow of the Holy One blessed be He on the day of the giving of the Torah.
Is, perhaps, the same true regarding Israel? The verse states: “In its shade I delighted and I sat,” it is I who delighted in Him and not the nations. Rabbi Aḥa ben Rabbi Ze’eira said two [statements]. He said one: This apple tree33See Tosafot (Shabbat 88a) who argue that the tree referred to here is a citron rather than an apple tree. produces its blossom before its leaves; so too, Israel, when they were in Egypt, achieved faith before hearing.
That is what is written: “The people believed, and they heard that the Lord had remembered” (Exodus 4:31).34The Israelites had a tradition from their fathers that they would be redeemed, and they believed that would occur even before they heard that God had spoken to Moses and said that He would redeem Israel (Midrash HaMevoar).