The moment we take the Torah from the ark is a time of great drama. The Torah is as close as we get to a representative of G-d on earth (hence the crowns, breastplates, royal insignia, lions of Judah, etc. that adorn the Torah scroll).
The prayer we recite is composed of three very different verses, spanning the past, the future and the present of the Jewish people.
The first verse, “vayehi binsoah haaron” harkens back to the time when we were travelling through the desert on the way to Israel. “When the ark was moved,” it was as if we were going into battle, so it was accompanied by a war chant “Arise, G-d, and scatter your enemies…”. It is an archaic, almost visceral echo of a violent and perforce barbaric past.
The next verse is far more refined. “ki mitzion tetzei torah” “For Torah shall go forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” This is a verse taken from Isaiah 2, talking about a time of universal harmony, when all war will be forgotten (The next verse is the famous “They will beat their swords into plowshares…”).
And finally, a phrase that is not biblical, but rather composed by the rabbis: “baruch shenatan torah lamo yisrael bikdushato.” “Blessed be the One who gave Torah to His people Israel in holiness.”
This sentence is meant to describe the Jewish people as we are (supposed to be) today: G-d’s people, gifted with the Torah. Taken together, these three verses start at a point of complete particularity, when we were a little desert tribe surrounded by powerful enemies. It then moves on to a time of complete universality, when all nations will come to Jerusalem to bask in the divine glory. And then it moves us back to where we are right now, struggling to find the right balance between our own Jewish identity and our common human identity.
The final word of the prayer “bikdushato” is deliciously ambiguous. It could be a reference to G-d, who in His state of holiness gave us the Torah. Or, more daring, it could be a reference to the people of Israel, who, by virtue of our (search for holiness) merited receiving the Torah. Or, perhaps, both. The world is a complicated place.
So within a span of a mere 25 Hebrew words, we are taken from a wild and uncivilized past to an idyllic future, and back to the present, promise-filled, moment which serves as the vibrant connection between them.