Deuteronomy 11:10

For the land whither thou goest in to possess it,.... The land of Canaan they were about to take possession of: [is] not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out; either the whole land of Egypt,

For the land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs: For the

i.e. With great pains and labour of thy feet, partly by going up and down to fetch water and disperse it, and partly by digging furrows with thy foot, and using engines for distributing the water, which engines they thrust with their feet. For though the river Nilus did once in a year overflow the grounds, and made them fruitful, yet ofttimes it failed or scanted them, and then they were put to great pains about their ground; and when it did overflow sufficiently, and left its mud upon the earth, yet that mud was in a little time hardened, and needed another watering and much digging and labour both of the hands and feet, especially in places something higher or more remote from that river; which inconvenience Canaan was free from.

Deuteronomy 11:10 For the land, whither thou goest in to possess it, [is] not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst [it] with thy foot, as a garden of herbs:Ver. 10. And wateredst it with thy foot.] Fetching and carrying water, called therefore the water of their feet, as our life is called, "the life of our hands," because maintained with the labour of our hands.

(10) Not as the land of Egypt.—“But much better. And Egypt was praised above all lands, as it is said (Genesis 13:10), ‘As the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt.’ And the land of Goshen, where Israel dwelt, is called ‘the best of the land of Egypt’ (Genesis 47:6). And even this was not so good as the land of Israel” (Rashi). Wateredst it with thy foot.—An allusion either to the necessity of carrying the water or to the custom of turning the water into little channels with the foot, as it flowed through the garden.

Verse 10. Wateredst it with thy foot] Rain scarcely ever falls in Egypt, and God supplies the lack of it by the inundations of the Nile. In order to water the grounds where the inundations do not extend, water is collected in ponds, and directed in streamlets to different parts of the field where irrigation is necessary. It is no unusual thing in the East to see a man, with a small mattock, making a little trench for the water to run by, and as he opens the passage, the water following, he uses his foot to raise up the mould against the side of this little channel, to prevent the water from being shed unnecessarily before it reaches the place of its destination. Thus he may be said to water the ground with his foot. See several useful observations on this subject in Mr. Harmer, vol. i., pp. 23-26, and vol. iii., p. 141. "For watering land an instrument called janta is often used in the north of Bengal: It consists of a wooden trough, about fifteen feet long, six inches wide, and ten inches deep, which is placed on a horizontal beam lying on bamboos fixed in the bank of a pond or river in the form of a gallows. One end of the trough rests upon the bank, where a gutter is prepared to carry off the water, and the other is dipped into the water by a man standing on a stage near that end, and plunging it in with his foot. A long bamboo, with a large weight of earth at the farther end of it, is fastened to that end of the janta near the river, and passing over the gallows, poises up the janta full of water, and causes it to empty itself into the gutter." This, Mr. Ward supposes, illustrates this passage. See Hindoo Customs, c., vol. iii., p. 104. But after all, the expression, wateredst it with thy foot, may mean no more than doing it by labour for, as in the land of Egypt there is scarcely any rain, the watering of gardens, c., must have been all artificial. But in Judea it was different, as there they had their proper seasons of rain. The compound word ברגל beregel, with, under, or by the foot, is used to signify any thing under the power, authority, &c., of a person and this very meaning it has in the sixth verse, all the substance that was in their possession, is, literally, all the substance that was under their feet, ברגליהם beragleyhem, that is, in their power, possession, or what they had acquired by their labour.

10–15. Another picture of the blessings of the land, cp. Deuteronomy 6:10 ff., Deuteronomy 7:12 ff., Deuteronomy 8:7 ff.; all like this in the Sg. form of address. But this time we see the land under a new aspect: its contrast to the flat and rainless Egypt. The section illustrates well both what is obvious and what is obscure in the frequent transition of our Book from the one to the other of the two forms of address. For though it is mainly in the Sg., there are in the present text four interruptions by the Pl.: one in Deuteronomy 11:10 (the Versions add another), one in Deuteronomy 11:11, all Deuteronomy 11:13, and one in Deuteronomy 11:14. The following notes will show that while the last is only an apparent Pl, the Versions supplying a Sg., nearly all the others are clearly editorial expansions.

Another motive for fidelity is added, namely, the entire dependence of the promised land upon God for its fertility.

10-12. The land… is not as… Egypt — Moses contrasts the land they have left with the land they are to possess.