Catholic Commentary
The People's Acceptance of the Covenant
7Moses came and called for the elders of the people, and set before them all these words which Yahweh commanded him.8All the people answered together, and said, “All that Yahweh has spoken we will do.” Moses reported the words of the people to Yahweh.
Exodus 19:7–8 describes Moses conveying God's covenant terms to the Israelite elders, who then give their unanimous consent to obey all that the Lord has commanded. The people's unqualified acceptance establishes the formal bilateral covenant exchange, demonstrating trust-based assent before the specific commandments are fully disclosed.
Israel's "we will do" is a total, unconditional yes made before knowing the cost—the prototype of faith that trusts the Lawgiver's character before understanding every demand.
Catholic tradition reads Israel's collective "we will do" through the lens of covenant theology that reaches its definitive form in Christ and the Church. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that God's covenant with Israel at Sinai is "one of those fundamental events" of salvation history in which God reveals himself as the one who saves and binds his people to himself (CCC 62, 2060). The covenant is not, in the Catholic understanding, a mere legal contract but a quasi-familial bond — what the Fathers called a foedus — grounded in love and demanding a response of the whole person.
Origen of Alexandria, commenting on this passage in his Homilies on Exodus, marvels at the unanimity of Israel's response and uses it to challenge the Church: if the people under the Old Covenant answered with one voice, how much more should the Church, illumined by the Spirit, respond to Christ's words with total and undivided fidelity?
St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 98, a. 1) situates the Sinai covenant within the providential pedagogy of the Law: the Old Law was given to a people God had already redeemed, and their assent to it was therefore a response of gratitude, not a precondition for earning salvation. This insight guards against a Pelagian reading of "we will do": Israel's "yes" is a response to grace already received in the Exodus.
The Second Vatican Council's Dei Verbum (§14) describes the Old Testament as the place where "the pedagogy of God's saving love" is found in full flower — and this moment at Sinai is its first great crescendo. The Church's Magisterium sees in Israel's covenant response the prototype of the baptismal "yes" by which each Christian and the whole Church pledges fidelity to the Word of God. As Pope Benedict XVI wrote in Verbum Domini (§9), God's word always seeks a human response of "free and conscious acceptance," a response that Israel models here for all subsequent generations of believers.
Israel's "All that Yahweh has spoken, we will do" is a searching mirror for contemporary Catholics. It challenges a selective, cafeteria approach to the faith — accepting the comfortable teachings while quietly bracketing the demanding ones. Israel's assent was total (kol) and communal, made before every detail of the Law was known. They trusted the Lawgiver before they knew every law.
For Catholics today, this has a very concrete application at the beginning of each Mass, where the gathered assembly implicitly renews this covenant posture — we do not come to negotiate with God but to receive his word and conform our lives to it. More specifically, at Baptism and Confirmation, each Catholic makes a personal and ecclesial "we will do" that mirrors Israel at Sinai: a prior, unconditional commitment to follow wherever Christ leads, before the full cost of discipleship is apparent.
When a particular Church teaching is difficult — on marriage, on social justice, on sexual ethics — this passage invites the Catholic not first to argue but first to ask: have I made Israel's fundamental act of trust? Do I believe the Lawgiver is good? That posture of prior trust is not blind obedience; it is the same faith Abraham exercised before Israel, and it is the soil in which mature moral understanding grows.
Commentary
Exodus 19:7 — Moses, the Mediator, Convenes the Elders
The opening verb — "Moses came and called for the elders" — is precise and deliberate. Moses does not address the raw crowd directly; he convenes the ziqnê ha-ʿam, the elders of the people, who in ancient Israelite society bore covenantal, judicial, and representative authority on behalf of the tribes. This is not a merely procedural detail. The covenant is being transacted through an ordered community with recognized heads, foreshadowing the ecclesial structure through which God would continue to govern his people. The phrase "set before them all these words" (wayyāśem lipnêhem) is a legal idiom; it evokes the laying out of treaty terms before a vassal in ancient Near Eastern suzerainty covenants. The words Moses "sets before" the elders are not yet the Decalogue (which comes in chapter 20), but the preamble found in Exodus 19:3–6: God's recounting of the Exodus as the foundation for the covenant, his offer of Israel as his "treasured possession," "a kingdom of priests," and "a holy nation." Moses acts here as the indispensable mediator — he has ascended the mountain (v. 3), received the word, descended, and now faithfully transmits it without addition or subtraction. This fidelity of the prophet-mediator is itself theologically significant.
Exodus 19:8 — The Communal Fiat
The people's response is unanimous and unqualified: kōl ʾăšer-dibber YHWH naʿăśeh — "All that Yahweh has spoken, we will do." The word kol ("all") appears twice in rapid succession — "all the people answered together" and "all that Yahweh has spoken" — stressing totality and comprehensiveness. There is no negotiation, no reservation, no partial acceptance. The verb naʿăśeh ("we will do") is a first-person plural cohortative, expressing collective resolve. This is Israel's corporate act of the will, their covenant oath. Moses then "returned the words of the people to Yahweh" (v. 8b), completing the bilateral exchange that formally constitutes a covenant: the suzerain offers terms, the vassal accepts, the mediator ratifies the exchange. Critically, this "yes" precedes the full disclosure of the Law's specific demands. Israel consents to obey before knowing every particular commandment — an act of trust in the character and goodness of the God who redeemed them from Egypt, not merely calculating compliance. The spiritual senses deepen the literal meaning considerably. Typologically, this communal "we will do" anticipates the Church's assent of faith — the obedience of faith (hypakoē pisteōs, Romans 1:5) — by which the new covenant people collectively and personally say "yes" to God's word revealed in Christ. The unanimous, corporate character of Israel's response prefigures the Church as a body: no member accepts the covenant in isolation, but in communion with the whole assembly. Allegorically, the elders who mediate between Moses and the people prefigure the apostles and their successors, through whom the Word is conveyed to the faithful. Anagogically, this scene of the entire people standing before God and pledging fidelity points toward the heavenly liturgy of Revelation 19, where the great assembly cries out its unanimous praise before the divine throne.