Israel Bloomed Like the Apple Before Sinai

The mountain still smoked. The people did not huddle to watch a neighbor's mouth. They did not sweeten the answer to please Moses or to please God. "All that the Lord has spoken we will do" rose from six hundred thousand throats as one sound (Exodus 19:8). Only later did the fuller formula bind doing to hearing (Exodus 24:7). Na'aseh v'nishma (נעשה ונשמע). We will do and we will hear. The doing went first.

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Moses climbed with their words though God already knew them. A messenger returns. Even heaven's messenger owes the report. His knees found the rock. He spoke the sentence God had heard from the plain. Then he came down into a camp that had already put its body under a shade with no fruit on it yet.

Blossom ahead of Leaves

An apple tree sets blossom before it sets leaves. Israel bloomed like the apple. They stepped under God's shade before the fruit of understanding had ripened. Fifty days stretch an apple from blossom toward fruit. Fifty days stretched Israel from the first night out of Egypt to the month of Sivan and the mountain. Freedom was not the finished fruit. Torah was.

They did not demand a full map of law before they said yes. A nation just out of brick pits put its body under the tree and trusted the fruit to come. The camp smelled of orchard and covenant at once, even while the stone was still closed.

Two Crowns on Every Head

The instant "we will do" went before "we will hear," six hundred thousand angels came down. Each Israelite received two crowns, one for the promise to act and one for the promise to listen. A heavenly voice marveled. Who told this people the secret the angels live by, doing before hearkening?

For one hour the nation wore heaven's fashion. Then the gold animal rose in the camp. Twice as many destroying angels came down and tore the crowns away. Moses gathered the fallen glory off the dirt, crown by crown, the way a man picks fruit that has been knocked down in a wind. The heads that had been heavy went light. The hour ended. The story of return began.

Hyssop on the Door before the Mountain

Long before crowns, redemption had begun with a plant worth almost nothing. Moses told Israel to take a bundle of hyssop and mark the doorposts with the blood of the Passover offering (Exodus 12:22). Hyssop grows in wall cracks. No cedar. No gold brush. A bound bunch, plain hyssop without a foreign name, dipped in a basin that held enough blood to wet the lintel and the two posts.

A woman bound the stems. She dipped. She struck the lintel. She pulled the children inside and shut the door until morning. Converts, servants, the whole household stayed in. Judgment walked the street. The low plant opened a night that led to plunder, sea, Sihon, Og, and the thirty-one kings. A little thing done at the commanded hour carried more than it seemed able to hold.

Sinai's apple and Egypt's hyssop moved in the same direction. Act with what is in the hand. Let the fruit explain itself later.

Rava's Finger and the Heretic

Centuries later, in a study house far from the mountain, Rava bent over a page until his own finger bled under it. Blood marked the parchment. A heretic watched and mocked a people that put mouth before ear, that promised before it inspected the terms.

Rava did not close the book. He answered that the upright walk in wholehearted trust while the cunning who demand to inspect every term first are undone by their own crookedness. The apple tree still stood in the argument, fruit before leaf, act before full hearing. The heretic had wanted a contract. Rava gave him a stained page and a nation that had already said yes.

The crowns would come back. Resh Lakish said God would one day set everlasting joy on those heads again. Moses still had the fallen ones in the story, gathered, waiting. The camp at Sinai had already spoken. The leaves of explanation would take centuries. The blossom had already gone up the mountain in a messenger's mouth.