Kommentar zu Schemot 19:16

בהיות הבקר lit., WHEN IT WAS BEING MORNING — This phrase tells us that He was there before them at the place of the Divine Revelation, something which it is not customary for human beings to do — that the teacher should await the arrival of his disciple. A similar instance we find in Scripture (Ezekiel 3:22, 23): “[God said unto me]. Arise, go forth into the plain, [and I will there speak with thee]. Then I arose, and went forth into the plain; and, behold the glory of the Lord stood there already” (Midrash Tanchuma, Ki Tisa 15; cf. Nedarim 8a).

ויהי קולות וברקים. The spectacle was similar to that experienced by the prophet Elijah at the same mountain in Kings I 19,11-12. David, in Psalms 68,9, also describes what happened at Sinai in similar terms.

ויהי ביום השלישי בהיות הבקר, “it was on the third day, during the morning,” the third day after they started sanctifying themselves, the sixth day of the month.
ויהי קולות וברקים, “and there was thunder and lightning.” The “voices” which we translated as “thunder” were those of the angels praising the Lord each and every morning, as we know from Job 38,7: “when the morning stars sang together and all the divine beings shouted for joy.” The “lightning” also referred to angels, a different group. We know that angels are described as lightning from Psalms 104,4: “He makes the winds His messengers, fiery flames His servants.” We also find this thought reflected in Ezekiel 1,13: “this fire, suggestive of torches, kept moving among the creatures; the fire had a radiance, and lightning issued from the fire.”
וענן כבד, and “heavy cloud.” The purpose of that was to separate between the angels and the people. If the Israelites had seen the angels they would have become frightened. We have a verse describing something similar occurring in Ezekiel’s vision (Ezekiel 1,4) ”a huge cloud and flashing fire, surrounded by a radiance;” this was followed (verse 5) by: “in the center of it were also the figures of four creatures.” The foregoing is a relatively new interpretation of this verse by Rabbeinu Chananel. It does not contradict, and must not be understood as contradicting the plain meaning of the words, i.e. that it was a cloudy day, that the קולות וברקים were thunder and lightning accompanied by some rain. This is in line with the plain meaning of Judges 5,4 where Devorah describes the weather on the day of the battle against Siserah, saying: “the earth trembled; the heavens dripped; yea the clouds dripped water. Mountains quaked, etc.” Rabbeinu Chananel’s explanation may be viewed as perhaps the foremost amongst the proverbial 70 facets according to which the written Torah may be explained. The cloud came first, followed by lightning and thunder, as is usual on such days. The reason the Torah does not report events in that order may have been to give prominence to the sound of the shofar. Had the Torah described events in their chronological order then the reader would have made a conceptual linkage between the words קולות and קול שופר, something which would have been wrong. By mentioning the thunder first, the Torah made certain that we would not associate the blast of the shofar with ordinary thunder experienced on that day. The difference between the sound of the thunder and the sound of the blast of the shofar may be described as similar to the difference between physical and spiritual sensations man experiences.