Harei zeh mit'aleh (is raised up). Masechet Avot, Perek Vav Mishnah Bet. The Mishnah says, Amar Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi teaches: Bechol yom vayom bat kol yotzet me'Har Chorev u'machrazet ve'omeret. Every single day, a bat kol, a heavenly voice, comes out of Har Chorev; from Har Sinai it declares and it says, Oy lahem laBeriyot me'alvona shel Torah. Woe unto the people because of the disgrace of the Torah. When people don't learn Torah, when they neglect its study, they are insulting the Torah, and a person is cursed for this sin, lo aleinu (may it not be upon us). Shekol mi she'eino osek baTorah nikra nazuf. Anybody who doesn't occupy himself with the study of Torah is cursed and called a nazuf, which is like somebody who is excommunicated. Shene'emar, like the Pasuk (verse) in Mishlei says, Nezem zahav be'af chazir. It's like a golden ring in the nose of a pig. Isha yafa vesarat ta'am. So it's like a beautiful woman whose understanding and reason have left her. A Torah scholar who is getting lazy and is not occupied with the study of Torah is like a golden ring. He's a Talmid Chacham, he's a great person, but he's in the nose of a pig. So even though there's tremendous value to that ring, that golden ring, it becomes dirty, it becomes disgusting, because the pig is going to roll around in the dirt. He's going to allow it to become soiled. He's going to allow it to become dirty. So a person has to say, he's a Talmid Chacham; he can't rest on his laurels and say, “I'm not going to study Torah intensely anymore.” He always has to be learning, always engaged in Torah. The same thing applies to the beautiful woman: the comparison is that he has to be like a scholar who doesn't know the reason that he learned, because if he didn't study as much as he could have, he obviously doesn't know what he's doing. And the idea of Bitul Torah (neglect of Torah study): a person accepted upon himself Na'aseh veNishma (we will do and we will hear), that he's going to study Torah constantly. So a person who's not studying Torah on that type of level with diligence should imagine that he is violating the covenant that he took at Har Sinai.
We're going to take these two Pesukim as talking about somebody who does spend his time studying Torah correctly. The tablets were Hashem's handiwork, and the writing was the writing of God. They were charut; that means they were engraved upon the tablets that Moshe Rabbeinu brought down from Har Sinai. Al tikrei charut ela cherut. Don't read it as charut, that it was engraved; rather, read it as cherut. It means it's freedom. A person who studies Torah is a real free person. She'ein lecha ben chorin ela mi she'osek beTalmud Torah. The only type of free person is the individual who's occupied with Torah study. When a person wants to free himself—and that means in a spiritual sense—and generally, all year long, we're slaves of the body, slaves of the desire, slaves of the Yetzer Hara (evil inclination). If somebody wants to overcome that, if somebody wants to have spiritual freedom, he has to occupy himself with Talmud Torah Lishma (for its own sake), where he learns to control himself, learns to put things in priority, learns to fight the Yetzer Hara and the pull of the body, and he frees himself to just the delight of his Neshama (soul), which is Torah study.
Vechol mi she'osek beTalmud Torah she'ne'emar u'miMatanah Nachaliel u'miNachaliel Bamot. Anybody who studies Torah is raised up like the Pasuk tells us from Matanah to Nahaliel and from Nahaliel to Bamot. This Pasuk is telling us that somebody who goes from studying Torah, which is the Matanah, the gift of Hashem, to becoming the Nahaliel, which is the Nachalah, the inheritance of God, and from there he's raised to Bamot, to great heights. Somebody who spends time the right way—we're using the different stops of the Jewish people along their journey during the desert to learn a different idea—that when somebody spends time studying Torah in an intense way, he becomes close to Hashem, he becomes part of the inner circle of HaKadosh Baruch Hu (the Holy One, blessed is He), and builds a relationship with him, so he becomes the possessor, he becomes the owner of the Torah as well.