Today’s daf records a discussion about God meting out “handfuls” of blessing to the righteous and punishment to the wicked:

When Rav Dimi came he taught: The Holy One, Blessed be He, will give each and every righteous person His handful, as it is stated: “Blessed be the Lord, Who day by day bears (literally, takes up by the handful) our burden …” (Psalms 68:20)

Abaye said to him: And is it possible to say so? But wasn’t it already stated: “Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and meted out heaven with the span …” (Isaiah 40:12)

Using a midrashic interpretation of a verse from Psalms, Rav Dimi teaches that God grants every righteous person a handful of blessing. But Abaye challenges this, citing a verse from Isaiah suggesting that God’s hand holds all the water in the world. How then could a righteous person not be overwhelmed by a handful of God’s reward?

Rav Dimi responds with an aggadic tradition about God’s generosity to the righteous:

As they say in the West in the name of Rava bar Mari: The Holy One, Blessed be He, will give every righteous person 310 worlds as it is stated: “To bequeath to those who love Me substance [yesh]; and I will fill their treasuries” (Proverbs 8:21). In numerical value, yesh is 310.

Rav Dimi notes that the Hebrew word for substance, yesh (literally, “here” or “hereness”) has a numerical value of 310 and imagines God playfully promising the righteous 310 times the reward in the afterlife as they would get in this life.The Talmud then records a parallel debate:

Rabbi Yehoshua said: And is it possible to say that if a person gives his handful to a pauper in this world, the Holy One, Blessed be He, gives him His handful in the World to Come? But isn’t it written: “And meted out heaven with the span” (Isaiah 40:12)?

A span is the distance from the end of the thumb to the end of the little finger. Rabbi Yehoshua finds it inconceivable that a person who gives a handful of sustenance to the poor could withstand a handful of God’s blessing in return. A surfeit of blessing such as this would kill even the hardiest of righteous people. But Rabbi Meir is unfazed by his colleague’s question:

Which attribute is greater? Is the attribute of reward greater or the attribute of punishment? You must say that the attribute of reward is greater than the attribute of punishment.

Rabbi Meir then brings complex scriptural proofs to show that evil people somehow endure eternal punishment while good people endure even greater eternal reward. He concludes with this teaching:

Just as the Holy One, Blessed be He, provides strength to the wicked to receive their punishment, so too, the Holy One, Blessed be He, provides strength to the righteous to receive their reward. 

In other words, those who do good need not fear that God’s rewards will overload them. God allows them to fully enjoy the handful of divine blessing they deserve.

These parallel discussions are focused on two different kinds of people: a tzaddik, who is steadfastly righteous, and a person who (merely) gives his handful of help to a poor person, whom Rabbi Meir also calls a tzaddik. I suggest that Rabbi Meir refers to both this way to be morally and spiritually inclusive. The rare individual whose righteousness is integral to his being will receive God’s handful of reward, yet will not be overwhelmed by it. Yet so will the common person who from time to time helps the poor with his handful, as he is also righteous. Both people are made the same comforting promise that God’s hand will pour out life-sustaining blessing upon them in limitless measure.

Read all of Sanhedrin 100 on Sefaria.

This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on March 27, 2025. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.