Shabbat Nugget – The Lion Will Dwell with the Lamb

In this week’s Torah portion we read a section that begins by telling us the rewards for studying Torah and observing the commandments: we will receive many blessing. Most of the blessings the Torah tells us we will receive are material blessings in our lives that take place in the messianic era, for example: the Torah states that “I will remove beasts of prey from the land” which is a reference to the days of Moshiach (Messiah) when the prophet says “The lion will live with the lamb.”

We can explain the mixture of post messianic era and the messianic era blessings in the following manner. The Torah is not just telling us to follow the Torah in order that you should be rewarded and have a good life rather it is also telling us the trans formative power of the Torah.  That if we follow the Torah the world will be healthy and function properly as the verse states “I will provide your rains in their times and the land will give its produce” etc. Therefore the Torah makes references to blessings of the Messanic era since the Torah is telling us how far reaching and trans formative our Torah observance is that it will ultimately head us to the Messianic era when the entire nature of the world will be elevated and we have physical and spiritual abundance.