After Man’s sin he is told that the ground will be cursed for his sake. The earth will only flourish in response to his living up to a higher ideal.
Here, the Torah shows us the first moment that the flourishing of the earth is not dependent on natural causes such as sunshine and rain, but on the moral standing of Man, to the degree that Man lives by God’s laws.
The giving of the Torah was to teach Man the path to come back to his original level.
ארץ ישראל was to be a returning to a form of paradise, to be lived on this earth.
The path for Man to return to paradise is the way of life detailed in the Torah.
This is explicit in פרשת בחקתי where the Torah tells us that particularly in ארץ ישראל, our behavior, either good or bad, will be reflected in the land’s flourishing or the opposite.
Beraishis 3:17, Pages 86-87
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RSRH mentions this same idea in Beraishis 2:8
