When the Holy One announced that He was going to give the Torah to flesh and blood, the angels objected. "What is man that You are mindful of him," they said, quoting the psalm, "and the son of earth that You thus visit him? O Lord, our Lord, is not Your name already sufficiently exalted in the earth? Confer Your glory upon the heavens!" (Psalms 8:4, 8:1).
God turned to Moses and said, "Answer them."
Moses hesitated. "Master of the Universe, I fear lest they consume me with the fiery breath of their mouths." So God told him to take hold of the throne itself. As it is written, He lays hold of the face of His throne and spreads His cloud over him (Job 26:9). Protected, Moses turned to the angels.
He went through the Decalogue one commandment at a time. "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt — did you suffer Egyptian bondage? Do you even need this commandment?" Silence. "Remember the Sabbath — do you labor, that you need a day of rest?" Silence. "Honor your father and your mother — have you parents?" Silence. "You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal — is there envy among you? Is there a yetzer that drives you to these things?" Silence.
The angels, the Talmud (Shabbat 88b) tells us, confessed they had been wrong. They agreed that the Torah belonged to the ones who actually needed it. Then they did something unexpected. Each of them turned to Moses and revealed a secret — a raz, a useful teaching. As it is written, You have ascended on high, You have led captivity captive, You have received gifts among men (Psalms 68:18). The psalm is read by the Rabbis as Moses ascending and coming back down laden.
When the angels finished their new psalm, they left off the line Confer Your glory upon the heavens. They knew now where the glory belonged.
The scene, preserved in the 1901 anthology Hebraic Literature, answers a question Jewish tradition has always worried at. Why give the Torah to people instead of to perfect beings? Because perfect beings have no use for it. The commandments are for the ones who break, fail, envy, and long. The angels figured it out once. They have not argued the point since.