יברכך ה' וישמרך, "may the Lord bless you and preserve you." According to the plain meaning of the text the blessing, i.e. basically any blessing, is that the recipient enjoy the blessing he enjoys already and that these blessings be increased both qualitatively and quantitatively and that they be enduring. The ability to enjoy the continuity of such a blessing can be conferred only by God, not by an earthly ruler. The latter may dispense largess but cannot ensure that the recipient keeps getting the benefit. Our sages (Tanchuma Nasso 10) illustrated this point by means of a parable when they said: when a mortal king resident in Rome has a friend who resides in Syria, he inquired after the friend's whereabouts, visited him and left a gift of 100 bars of gold. The friend loaded a couple of donkeys with the gold intending to move to Rome with his new-found wealth. On the way he was attacked and had everything he owned stolen from him. It was clearly beyond the king's power to protect all his friends against robbers world-wide.
A Midrashic approach: The word יברכך implies being blessed with material wealth; the word וישמרך implies that the recipient is preserved so that he can perform God's commandments as a result of the material wealth God has blessed him with. The words יאר ה' פניו אליך, mean that God may grant you the kind of children who are full of Torah knowledge. The Midrash bases this insight on Proverbs 6,25 כי נר מצוה ותורה אור, "for like a single candle lighting a narrow area is the performance of a single commandment, whereas the performance of the Torah in all its aspects provides great light." Furthermore, the same words include the blessing that "from you will stem priests who in turn will illuminate the Altar in the Temple," as it is written in Maleachi 1,10 ולא תאירו מזבחי חנם, "you will not light up My Altar without recompense." We have another verse supporting this point in Leviticus 6,5 where the Torah writes: "and the fire on the Altar will never be extinguished."
Concerning the precise meaning here of the word ויחונך, Rabbi Chiyah the great taught that it means that the Lord will make His camp near you (from the root חנה). Another approach holds that the word promises that God will make prophets descend from your loins; that school of thought bases itself on the verse in Zecharyah 12,10 ושפכתי על בית דוד ועל יושבי ירושלים רוח חן ותחנונים, "I will pour out over the house of David and over the people of Jerusalem a spirit of pity and compassion." These are the ingredients which we think of when we think of prophets. Still another approach sees in the word ויחונך a reference to grace in the sense of being held in esteem, being appreciated. The word appears in that meaning in Esther 2,17 where we are told that all who saw Esther, including the king, immediately formed this positive opinion of her.
On the final verse, ישא ה' פניו אליך וישם לך שלום, "may the Lord raise His countenance toward you and grant you peace," we must compare the meaning of this expression to Deut. 10,17 אשר לא ישא פנים ולא יקח שוחד, "Who does not play favourites nor accept bribes." How can we reconcile these two apparently contradictory concepts of asking the very same God whom we applaud for not playing favorites in Deut. 10,17 to play favourites with the entire Jewish people in the priestly blessing formulated by the same God?
[The word ישא has to be translated then as "will forgive." Ed.] If the victim of an unfavorable decree has repented before the decree has been sealed his repentance is effective. If not, such as in Deut. 17,10 it is not.
A second approach to the first verse. The word יברכך implies being blessed with sons, the word וישמרך implies being blessed with daughters who require additional protection and safeguarding on the part of their parents. This is reflected in the promise in Psalms 121,5 ה' שומרך, ה' צלך על יד ימינך, "the Lord is your guardian; the Lord is your protection, at your right hand."
The verse יאר ה' פניך אליך describes the element life which is associated with light, such as in באור פני מלך חיים, "in the light of the king's face there is life"
(Proverbs 16,15). The word appears in a similar connotation in Psalms 67,2 אל-הים יחננו ויברכנו יאר פניו אתנו סלה, "May God be gracious to us and bless us; may He illuminate us with His face, Selah."
Concerning the last verse of the blessing(s) ישא ה' פניו אליך, this means that "in every direction you turn may God arrange for you to find peace and harmony and be protected from all unpleasant happenings." This is a form of God's personal benevolent supervision of our fates generally referred to as השגחה פרטית. We find the reverse of this threatened by God as part of threats of the prophet Isaiah when he quoted God as saying: "I am going to turn My watchful eye away from you (God refusing to hear our prayers)"
(Isaiah 1,15).
In Berachot 20, the sages derive from the wording ישא ה' פניו אליך that although when you look at this verse superficially you get the impression that it contradicts the verse where God says that He does not play favorites, using the word לא אשא פנים this way is misleading. All that is meant is that God will lift our countenances, i.e. respond to our first having raised our face to Him in prayer and supplication. This is not what is called "playing favorites," i.e. using double standards. This idea is even reflected in the text of the Torah. We read in Deut. 8,10: "you will eat and be satisfied and you will bless the Lord your God." Assume that father, mother, and children assemble around the family table to consume their daily meal and they find that there is not enough to sate even one of them, never mind all of them. They will turn their faces to God, and each one will hold back and help himself to a minimum making sure there will be enough to go around. When God observes such conduct, He will most certainly be affected by it and make sure that in the future this family will not be lacking for anything. This is also the deeper meaning behind the famous line in Song of Songs 3,7 that Solomon's bed was watched over by 60 guards. Did then Solomon need these guards? Was he in danger of attacks by assassins, by terrorists? What is meant by these words is that the priestly blessing which comprises 60 letters was engraved on the edge of Solomon's bed.
Another explanation of this line in Song of Songs: the bed mentioned in Song of Songs is not that of King Solomon at all. It is the "bed" of He who owns peace, i.e. God. The "bed" is the Holy Temple; The reason the Temple is compared to a bed is that just as the function of the bed is for those on it to practice the commandment of increasing the human population of the world, so it was a propensity of all the furnishings in the Temple to increase and multiply. We have a glimmer of this in Kings I 8,8: "the staves (attached to the Holy Ark) were growing longer so that they would wind up being visible in the Sanctuary in front of the Shrine. A verse indicating something similar is found in Chronicles II 3,6 where Ezra describes the gold of the Temple as זהב פרוים, understood to mean "gold which had the capacity to multiply, which produced fruit." A third scriptural verse which at least alludes to this phenomenon as far as the materials used for the Temple is concerned is found in Kings I 7,2 where the entire Temple is described as בית יער הלבנון, "The Lebanon Forest House," suggesting that just as a forest and its trees keep growing, so the Temple would keep expanding. The next words in that verse in Song of Songs, i.e. כלם אחוזי חרב, "all of them trained in warfare, i.e. "swordsmen," refer to names of the Lord. The words following i.e. איש חרבו על ירכו, "each one with his sword on his loins", beg the question what the ירך, the seat of a man's semen has to do in this verse. The answer is that these words describe that even if Solomon (symbol of the Jewish people) had frightening dreams at night, dreams during which he (they) felt in immediate danger, thanks to the encouragement derived by the proximity of all these names of God the people would rouse themselves in the morning, go to the Synagogue, and shake off any fear experienced during the night in a nightmare. They would find the effects of the dream dissolve without any further ado. In order to provide the Jewish people in the desert with this remedy, God instructed Aaron and his sons to bless the people in the way the Torah specified. God said: "in the past when I needed to extend a blessing to My creatures I would bless Adam and Chavah, as we know from Genesis 1,28 'God blessed them saying be fruitful and multiply etc.'" God blessed Noach when the latter was in need of such as blessing as we know from Genesis 9,1: "God blessed Noach and his sons." He blessed Avraham as we know from Genesis 25,1: "God had blessed Avraham with everything." From Avraham's time on, God changed His mode of administering blessings directly and assigned the task to Avraham saying to him: "become a source of blessing"
(Genesis 12,2). Avraham responded by siring two sons, Ishmael and Yitzchak. Avraham failed to bless either of them. In order to understand Avraham's failure to bless either one of his sons, let us illustrate this by means of a parable. A king who owned an orchard entrusted it to a profit-sharing farmer to look after it. The orchard in question contained within it right in the center two trees, one of which contained the elixir of life whereas the second one contained a poison which would kill. The farmer was in a quandary, saying to himself that if he watered both trees he would further the growth of the deadly tree. If, on the other hand, he did not water either tree he would cause the elixir of life to die out. He decided to serve out his contract and to leave the decision of what to do to the king, the owner, after he himself had bowed out of the picture. The "king" in the parable is God. The "orchard" is earth. The "farmer" is Avraham, and the two trees, the elixir of life and the poisonous one, are Yitzchak and Ishmael respectively. Avraham said to himself: "if I bless Yitzchak, Ishmael will demand to be blessed also. Seeing that he is wicked, I cannot do that. I prefer to pass and not exercise my discretion. After all, I am only flesh and blood, not all-knowing like the Lord." What happened? After Avraham had died we find that the Torah records that God bestowed the blessing He had first given to Avraham on his son Yitzchak after his father had died
(Genesis 25,11). Yitzchak in turn blessed Yaakov. Yaakov blessed all his twelve sons as we read in Genesis 49,28 "all these (aforementioned ones) are the twelve tribes of Israel and this is what he had said to them when he blessed them." From that point on, God said to Moses: "the blessings are at your (Israel collectively) disposal. The priests shall be the ones to administer them
(Based on Tanchuma Nasso 9).