The Torah describes the revelation at Sinai as occurring "before the eyes of all the people" (Exodus 19:11). The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael takes this phrase and draws from it one of the most extraordinary claims in all of rabbinic literature.
What did the people of Israel see at Sinai? More than any prophet ever saw — before or after. The Mekhilta states plainly: they saw at that time what Ezekiel and Isaiah could not see. The two greatest visionary prophets in the Hebrew Bible, who beheld the divine throne and the heavenly court, saw less than the ordinary Israelites standing at the foot of the mountain.
The proof comes from (Hosea 12:11): "and by the prophets I shall be imaged." The prophets received God's revelation through images and visions — filtered, symbolic, indirect. Ezekiel saw the chariot through layers of metaphor. Isaiah glimpsed the throne room through angelic intermediaries. Their visions were real but mediated.
At Sinai, there was no mediation. The people saw the Shechinah — the divine Presence itself — directly. No symbols, no intermediary angels, no prophetic filter. Every man, woman, and child present at that moment perceived God more clearly than any prophet would in the centuries to come.
This teaching elevates the Sinai revelation to a category entirely its own. Prophecy, even at its highest level, operates through approximation and imagery. Sinai was direct encounter. The entire nation, for one moment, exceeded the prophetic capacity of Israel's greatest seers.