Musar על מגילה 23:24

To come back to the statement of our sages that the Jewish people accepted the Torah voluntarily only because of their miraculous salvation from Haman's decree. I can think of three reasons why this acceptance occurred at that particular time in Jewish history. The sin they had committed at the time when they went to participate in the feast given by king Ahasverus was one committed totally voluntarily. The Jews had not been under any physical or political pressure to attend that feast and eat forbidden foods. The Book of Esther 1,8 goes to some length to stress that there was no religious compulsion regarding the drinking of non-kosher wine, nor was there any compulsion to eat treif: on the contrary, the Megillah emphasises that the king had given orders לעשות כרצון איש ואיש, to comply with every guest's wishes" (ibid.). Our sages (Megillah 12) comment on this that the king had given orders to comply both with the wishes of Mordechai and those of Haman; this is the meaning of איש ואיש in the verse. The Jews, having sinned voluntarily, now resolved to accept Torah voluntarily as an act of rehabilitating themselves.