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Rashi says the men come to learn, the women come to listen & the children come to give s’char for those that bring them. The Rambam says that even the greatest torah scholars who know everything had to come & listen to the king read the Torah.
The דרש דוד asks, if the reason that we do הקהל is that the people should listen & learn the torah, wouldn't it have made more sense for people to be grouped by level, instead of having everyone come together, from the smallest child to the greatest rabbi?
The ספר החינוך says, the mitzvah of הקהל is not just limud hatorah, but being that the whole essence of Klal Yisroel is Torah & that's what differentiates us from the rest of the world, we gather everyone together so that it should be a momentous occasion that everyone's talking about. When people ask, what's going on? Why is everyone here? The answer is to hear Torah & that will have people talking about it & praising it, infusing a desire in the people to pursue it.ר' אריה לווין asks, it says in the gemara in berochos לעולם ירגיז אדם יצה"ט על יצה"ר; a person should always agitate the yetzer hatov at the yetzer hara, then you won't sin. He asks, how do you translate the word רגזו, and how do we have the yetzer hatov agitating the yetzer hara?
He uses the following mashal to explain.
There were two merchants with neighboring stores. One was full of customers at all hours of the day, making the owner very wealthy, and one which nobody came into, obviously making the owner very poor. One day a buyer came into the poor man's store & was looking around. It seemed, finally, the poor man was going to get a big sale. Alas, along comes the wealthy shopkeeper from down the block, trying to get the customer to go to his store. The poor man starts yelling & getting angry, saying, you have to try to take my one customer? Can't you let me have something? When the people heard what happened, they all agreed with the poor man. His argument was so strong that they all supported him and the wealthy shopkeeper left. That's the meaning of להרגיז; that you make a strong enough argument that your opponent just leaves on his own. This is the way we have to deal with the yetzer hara. All day he's feeding us reasons why we can't learn, so when night comes, & the work excuses are over, he tries to get us with other reasons that we can't learn. He's just like the rich man trying to take the one customer from the poor man. However, being that we just said that our whole essence is Torah, we have to be like the poor merchant. We have to get angry & say to him with an irrefutable argument, you got me all day long, now I have a little time at night to learn; do you have to take that away too?! Can't you let me have something?! Our desire has to be so strong that we get angry at any form of the yetzer hara that tries to stop us from learning in the little time we have, strengthening our commitment to learn & follow the torah, enabling our nation to survive!
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