ייִדישער מחשבֿה אויף דברים 5:22

Leviticus Rabbah 1, illustrates the point made previously, beautifully. Under natural law, a load that appears heavy to one person, appears relatively light when shouldered by two people. Similarly, something difficult for six hundred thousand people to suffer, should be impossible for a single person to endure. So we find the whole people telling G-d that they could not continue to listen to G-d’s voice. Yet Moses, alone, was able to listen to G-d’s voice without difficulty. (Deut. 5,24) This fact illustrates the principle of quality versus quantity. When the Talmud (Shabbat 94) describes the qualities required to attain the level of moral and intellectual greatness of a prophet, we can see that such people were extremely rare even amongst the Jewish people. The people of Deut. 5, realising their lack of moral preparedness knew that under the prevailing conditions they could not both survive physically and be recipients of G-d’s direct communication all at the same time.