“You (Moshe, said in the masculine) go close and hear all that Hashem our G-d says, and you (Moshe, said in the feminine) shall tell us all that Hashem our G-d tells you, and we will hear and we will do” (D’varim 5:24). This verse, with Moshe paraphrasing what the nation had said to him right after they heard the “Ten Commandments” from G-d Himself, contains some interesting nuances. First of all, why did Moshe perceive that the nation referred to him as a female (the second “you”), and why, if he did, did he use the masculine form for the verse’s first “you” before switching to the feminine form for the second one? Secondly, why was the communication between G-d and Moshe referred to twice? Couldn’t the paraphrase have been made shorter by just saying “you tell us all that G-d tells you” rather than first asking Moshe to hear what G-d says and then asking him to tell them what G-d told him? Additionally, from this verse it seems that immediately after the nation heard G-d speak, they reversed the “secret code” (see Shabbos 88a: “who revealed to My sons the secret that the angels use”) which they had employed when they accepted G-d’s covenant, telling Moshe they would now “hear” before they “do,” instead of first committing to “do” whatever G-d commands and then “hearing” what it is He commanded (see Sh’mos 24:7). If this was an about-face, why did they lose the “special adornments” received for first saying “we will do” and then saying “we will listen” after the golden calf (see Rashi on Sh’mos 33:4) if even before that sin they had retracted this formula?

Rashi addresses why the second “you” is in the feminine form, explaining that Moshe became “weakened” by the distress he felt because the nation had asked to hear what G-d has to say from Moshe rather than hearing it from G-d directly, which indicated that they were “not in a hurry to get close to G-d out of love.” Curiously, Rashi (whose comments here are not based on any known Midrash) did not explain Moshe’s weakness as being based on the nation reversing their commitment from “doing” first and then “hearing” to now “hearing” before they “do;” apparently this reversal was not problematic. The question is why not, as well as what Rashi meant by “not hurrying to get close to G-d out of love” (which is not the same as not loving G-d, only fearing him, as if it were Rashi would have put it in much simpler terms.)

The Talmud (Makos 23b-24a, see Ramban on Sh’mos 20:6) tells us that the nation was only able to understand the first two of the “Ten Commandments;” for the rest of them they only heard G-d’s “voice,” but could not make out any words. Previously (see pg. 4 of http://www.aishdas.org/ta/5772/vaeschanan.pdf) I suggested that this was a result of every “utterance” of G-d being “shaleim,” complete, and therefore simultaneously including every aspect of the concept being “uttered.” For example, G-d commanded us to “keep the Sabbath” and “remember the Sabbath” simultaneously (“Shamor v’Zachor b’Dibur Echad”), since both constitute the very nature of our fulfillment of the commandment (the things we must do and the things we can’t do). More than one reason for keeping the Sabbath was “announced” in the very same moment: because G-d created the world in six days and rested on the seventh (Sh’mos 20:10) and because we were slaves in Egypt and He redeemed us (D’varim 5:14-15). The prohibition against doing work was “stated” together with all its qualifications (such as bringing the Sabbath offerings in the Temple, which would otherwise constitute violating the Sabbath). Because all of the details and qualifications of each commandment were said together (in the very same utterance), the nation couldn’t distill the different “voices” to understand what was being said, and needed Moshe to explain it to them. The first two commandments, on the other hand, that there is only one G-d and that there is no other deity, have no qualifications, so were able to be understood by everyone. [According to this, it was only the first part of the second commandment that the nation was able to “hear” (Sh’mos 20:3 and D’varim 5:7), since there were multiple details in the rest of this commandment.] Every other commandment, though, has details, specifications and qualifications that could not be “heard,” i.e. understood,  by anyone who was not on Moshe’s level of prophecy because they were all stated at once.

Before hearing G-d “speak,” the nation had committed to “doing” whatever G-d commanded even before “hearing” what the commandment was. This commitment didn’t change after hearing G-d “speak;” it was their awareness of what it would take to fulfill G-d’s commandments that changed. Rather than just “doing” based on hearing G-d’s instructions and trying to “understand” it afterwards, they realized that they had to understand the details of each commandment in order to know exactly how to properly fulfill it. They needed Moshe to explain each commandment to them, and therefore asked him to do so; they would “hear” what G-d was really saying from Moshe, and then, after understanding how to fulfill G-d’s commandment, “do” it. The changing of the order from “do and then hear” to “hear and then do” was not because their commitment was any weaker, but because their understanding of how to fulfill that commitment had become clearer.

Moshe felt “weakened” because he thought that despite not being able to take any action after hearing directly from G-d until it was explained to them, the nation would/should still want to hear G-d’s words directly from Him, out of “love” for G-d and a desire to be as close to Him as possible. (Compare this with Moshe’s reaction when he realized that they wanted a copy of the Torah even though they needed the Kohanim/Levi’im to fully explain it, see Rashi on D’varim 29:3.) It wasn’t because they changed the order, now insisting on “hearing” the commandments before “doing” them, as they would rightfully need to “hear” Moshe explain them before being able to “do” them. It was their not wanting to hear the words from G-d directly, which was understandable based on the danger it posed (see 5:22). Nevertheless, to Moshe it was indicative of “not hurrying to get close to G-d out of love,” something that Moshe apparently had difficulty relating to, since “ahava m’kalkeles es hashura,” love brings about irrational actions.

Since it wasn’t Moshe having to hear G-d’s words (in order to explain them) that “weakened” him, but that they only wanted to hear it from Moshe (and not from G-d first), only the second “you” is in the feminine form. And since the cause of the change from “doing then hearing” to “hearing then doing” was the realization that they needed Moshe to first “hear” (and understand) what G-d said so that he could then explain it to them, there are two clauses in the verse; first Moshe would distill the many “voices” inherent in G-d’s commandments, then he would tell the nation precisely what G-d was commanding and how they should implement it.