Rebbi (Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi) offers a different reading of the events at Sinai, one that elevates Moses's stature even further. He argues that we would only need to "acknowledge the greatness of Moses" through special evidence if we assumed that God had retracted His own directive — that is, if God had changed His mind about something and Moses had to navigate that reversal. But Rebbi insists this is not what happened.
The background is (Exodus 19:21), where God instructs Moses to go down and warn the people not to approach the mountain. If God later reversed this instruction, Moses would appear as a prophet who had to manage divine inconsistency — and his greatness would lie in his diplomatic skill. But Rebbi rejects this reading entirely.
Instead, Rebbi explains, God told Moses something straightforward: "I will call you from the top of the mountain and you will ascend." And that is exactly what happened. Verse 20 records: "And the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses ascended." No retraction. No reversal. God summoned and Moses went up. The simplicity of the sequence is itself the proof of Moses's greatness.
Moses did not need dramatic circumstances to demonstrate his prophetic authority. He did not need to resolve contradictions or smooth over divine changes of plan. His greatness was visible in the most basic fact imaginable: God called, and Moses climbed. The relationship between God and Moses was so direct, so immediate, so uncomplicated that the plain text of Scripture was sufficient testimony. Moses's greatness required no elaborate proof — it was self-evident in the narrative itself.