When a Hebrew slave chooses to remain in servitude rather than go free at the end of his six-year term, the Torah prescribes a specific ritual: his master takes an awl and bores through his ear against the doorpost (Exodus 21:6). The Mekhilta asks the obvious question — why the ear? The human body has many parts. Why was the ear singled out for this painful and permanent marking?
Rabbi Yochanan interpreted it symbolically, and his explanation became one of the most memorable teachings in rabbinic literature. The ear that heard God's voice on Mount Sinai declaring "You shall not steal" (Exodus 20:15) — and then went and stole, which is the reason the court sold him into slavery in the first place — let that ear be bored.
The punishment matches the failure with surgical precision. This man stood at Sinai. He heard the commandments directly from God. The sound of the divine voice entered through his ears along with every other Israelite. "You shall not steal" was not secondhand information for him. It was direct revelation.
And he stole anyway. The ear that received the commandment failed to transmit it to the rest of the body. It heard but did not obey. So when this man — having been sold by the court as punishment for his theft — reaches the end of his term and says, "I love my master, I do not want to go free" (Exodus 21:5), the Torah marks the organ that failed. The ear that heard God's voice and ignored it now bears a permanent hole as testimony to the gap between hearing and doing.