ViZoth Habracha: What blessing?

There is no Shabbath for the last parsha of the Torah. This section is read on Simchath Torah and immediately followed by beginning the cycle again at Genesis. The Torah cannot end, it can only begin again. 

Much of the parsha is written in poetic allusion. The tribal benedictions are all nearly opaque. Clear messages of praise, blame, bequest and rejection would be too harsh and could have terrible consequences. Tribes could become disaffected.  The nation could fall apart.  Keeping the statements vague allows room for interpretation. It could maintain the aspects of reward for loyalty to the tribe, and perhaps a message of focus on areas that have been problematic for that tribe, without generating a sense of rejection or rebellion. 

Before the individual tribes are singled out, there is a brief allusion to the assemblage of the newly liberated nation at Mount Sinai, ending in the people recognizing the reign of Gd as king after they received the Torah as  their legacy.  This Torah is the actual bracha. 

Bracha is translated as blessing. I do not  have a visceral understanding  of blessing. It has an aspect of  something special, not shared by everyone.  Chazal interpret the references ( in the second verse)  to Seir (assigned home of Esau) and Paran  (Ishmael) as  references to the rejection by these cousins of the Torah, bolstering the exclusive nature of the blessing. 

There is another meaning to bracha;  When the branch of a tree or vine is planted in the earth; and the branch  takes root  and becomes an independent entity, that is the agricultural meaning of bracha.  That is a bracha that I can understand.   When some good aspect of our genes and our heritage blossoms in our children, we are blessed. 

Thus, the Torah, the root of the blessing, is replanted annually, The Torah is the bracha