Deuteronomy 11:10 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The land is not as the land of Egypt The fruitfulness of it depends more especially on the divine providence, and therefore you should be careful to serve the Lord, and secure his favour and blessing. Wateredst it with thy foot That is, with great pains and labour of thy feet; partly by fetching water and dispersing it, and partly by digging furrows, by a spade, with thy foot, and using engines for distributing the water, which engines they wrought with their feet. This is explained by a passage out of Philo, who tells us that the Egyptians, to supply the want of rain, were wont to water their gardens by machines for drawing water, fixed upon the banks of the Nile; which machines were so contrived as to be turned with their feet. So the meaning is, that whereas Egypt was watered by human art, Canaan was watered by rain from heaven, as the next verse explains.