D’var Torah Ekev

For the Lord your God is bringing you to a good Land, a Land with brooks of water, fountains and depths, that emerge in valleys and mountains, a Land of wheat and barley, vines and figs and pomegranates, a Land of oil producing olives and honey, a Land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, you will lack nothing in it, a Land whose stones are iron, and out of whose mountains you will hew copper. And you will eat and be sated, and you shall bless the Lord, your God, for the good Land He has given you. (Deuteronomy 8:7-10)
These four consecutive verses describe the goodness of the Promised Land, and therefore it is not surprising that both the first and last verses describe the Land as "good."
With his keen eye, the Gaon of Vilna discerns that the verses praise the Land on all levels: inanimate, vegetative, animal and speaker (i.e., man, the highest level). (The order within the verses is not the ascending order we present.)
"A Land whose stones are iron, and out of whose mountains you will hew copper" is the inanimate level;
"A Land of wheat and barley, vines and figs and pomegranates, a Land of oil producing olives and honey" is the vegetative level;
"A Land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, you will lack nothing in it" refers to "eating bread with the meat of fowl and animals," explains the Gaon, and as such presents the animal level;
"And you will eat and be sated, "deals with the highest level, speaker, "the blessing is that they (the Israelites) will eat of the goodness of the Land and be satiated; 'and you shall bless the Lord, your God, for the good Land He has given you' blesses them that pass their days in good, to the point where their lips will be worn out from saying 'enough.' [Babylonian Talmud, Ta'anit 9a] and throughout all your days you will bless the Lord your God," in the exposition of the Gaon.
We may add to the Gaon's comments that the Land of Israel, and only she, is the "Land of the Shechina," thus her advantage in connection with the highest level, that of speaker, is that within her it is easier to connect to the Shechina than in any other land on the planet. (David Magence)

Shabbat Shalom
The Va’ad