EXOD912 According to the terms of the covenant, the Jews are obligated to be loyal to God and to love Him, expressing that love primarily through obedience to God's commandments. These commandments demand that Jews live out God's will in the thick of life, not just in a cloistered environment like a synagogue or monastery, and that they teach them to their children and “Recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up.” (Deuteronomy 6:7, which is part of the Shema, one of the two central prayers in daily and holiday Jewish liturgy.) They are, in other words, to pervade each Jew’s life. In return for such love and loyalty, God is to reward the Jews with continued existence through progeny as numerous as the stars in the heaven, ownership of the Land of Israel, material well-being, and -- probably the most important of all -- the continued, special relationship with God. On the one hand, failing to abide by the covenant will, the Bible assures us, produce the reverse: physical debilitations, loss of the Promised Land, and detachment from God. In respect for the promises He made in the covenant, however, God will not abandon the people forever, even if they sin grievously, but will rather forgive them and return them to the Promised Land and to the blessings of progeny and well- being. God will do this also because God by nature is not only just but loving and merciful. God’s patience, though, is also a function of His own interest in preserving the covenant, for the People Israel were to be God’s great experiment with humankind, God's “Chosen People” to be “a light of the nations,” a model for all other peoples of what God really wants in His human creatures. [This theme is expressed in several forms. The People Israel is to be “My treasured possession among all the peoples” and “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5-6); “a people consecrated to the Lord your God: of all the peoples of the earth the Lord your God chose you to be His treasured people” (Deuteronomy 7:6); “the Lord's portion” and “His own allotment” (Deuteronomy 32:9); and “My chosen one, in whom I delight,” who “shall teach the true way to the nations” and thus be “a light of nations” (Isaiah 42:1, 49:6). See also the Messianic visions cited later in this chapter.] Consequently, God has a vested interest in having Israel as a Chosen People: Apparently convinced that He cannot demand model behavior from everybody, God and nevertheless wants a group of people who can exemplify what living a godly way of life is all about. God’s need for a model people forces Israel’s hand. They agreed to the covenant amid thunder and lightning at Mount Sinai, hardly an opportunity for free, coolly reasoned, informed consent! (Exodus 19-24, especially 24:7) and Deuteronomy 5 (note 5:24). The Rabbis later tell two stories about this process. According to one, God went to all the other peoples of the world and offered them His covenant, and they each refused when they found out some of its demands. Finally, as a last resort, God went to the measly People Israel, and they agreed to it without ever hearing its terms! (See Sifrei Devarim par. 343 and Numbers Rabbah 14:10). That is consent, but certainly not informed consent. The other story picks up on the biblical description of the awesome setting of Mount Sinai and says that God actually held a mountain over their heads, and said, “Either accept the covenant, or this will be your burial place!” B. Shabbat 88a and B. Avodah Zarah 2b. On that account, Israel’s consent to be God’s covenanted people was both uninformed and coerced. Similarly, another rabbinic source has God saying this: “For I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God: you shall therefore be holy, for I am holy,”... when it says “to be your God, it means even against your will. Sifra, “Shemini”12:4 on Leviticus 11:45, 57b. Clearly, then, it was not Israel’s calm, voluntary choice that brought them into the special relationship, but rather the love and fear of God.