This is a kasher that was asked by Rabbi Shneibalg, the rav of the Blockbuster shteeble (I believe more formally called the Yeshurun) with some help on the concepts from my brother Yosef. It goes as follows:
Most people will no doubt have at least heard of the midrash that when the Jewish people were offered the Torah at Mount Sinai, that Hashem held the mountain over their heads, putting them in a situation of duress and essentially forcing the acceptance of the Torah. From this episode, we gain some understanding of why when we transgress, we get an opportunity to do Teshuvah and it doesn’t all end when we go astray.
However, we learn out from gemorah (unfortunately I havenot studied it so cannot give you a source), that if I was to approach you with a gun and tell you I want to buy your car, so long as the purchase is made for a fair value, if you went to the Beth Din later, they would rule that the sale is good, even though you were put in a position of duress.
Hopefully at this point, a problem should be occuring to you. If the Beth Din consider the sale under duress to be good, how can it be that the opposite was the case at Sinai when we were essentially forced to accept the Torah?
The answer that was given requires us to consider the two situations side by side and note the difference. The key to the car sale situation is that so long as I bought the car for a fair value (if I say I want to buy the car for £40, then it becomes a matter of stealing), then the sale is made good by the fact that you part with the money, which at least in part means you could have gone out and bought a replacement that is the same already.
However, in the case where we received the Torah, when do we receive our payment for doing the Mitzvahs and keeping the Torah? In the next world. Therefore, we havn’t actually received our payment yet and this is why the outcomes are different.
