(Exodus 20:17) says that God came to Sinai "in order to exert you." The Mekhilta reinterprets this: "exert" actually means "to make you great." God's arrival at Sinai was not meant to burden Israel but to elevate them.
The verse continues: "and so that His fear be upon your faces." The Mekhilta identifies this "fear" as shame-facedness — the capacity to feel embarrassment, to blush at wrongdoing. Far from being a weakness, shame-facedness is declared a good sign in a person. It is the emotional faculty that prevents sin before it happens.
The connection between shame and righteousness runs deep. The verse concludes: "so that you not sin." The Mekhilta draws the causal chain explicitly: shame-facedness leads to fear of sin. A person who can feel embarrassed about wrong behavior will avoid that behavior. A person incapable of shame has lost a critical moral safeguard.
The prophet Jeremiah confirmed this from the negative side. (Jeremiah 6:15): "Were they ashamed that they committed abominations?" The question is rhetorical — they were not ashamed, and that was precisely the problem. When a society loses the capacity for shame, abominations follow. The Mekhilta treats the Sinai experience as God's gift of moral sensitivity to Israel. He came not only to give laws but to implant in His people the emotional infrastructure needed to keep those laws — the ability to feel shame.