ארץ אשר לא במסכנות תאכל בה לחם, "a land where you will not eat bread in poverty.⁠" A land in which all the good things of earth can be found such as the land of Egypt which the Torah compared to "a garden of the Lord,⁠" nonetheless lacks certain ingredients found elsewhere so that people eat bread in such a land of plenty in poverty, not enjoying the affluence around them. This is why the Torah praises the Holy Land by comparison to the land of Egypt seeing it offers the same advantages without the accompanying drawbacks. None of the food products found anywhere in the world are not also available in the land of Israel. There are, however, agricultural products which are exclusive to the land of Israel and cannot be grown successfully elsewhere. This is the meaning of the words לא תחסר כל בה, "nothing is lacking in it (the land of Israel).⁠"

It is possible that the expression: "you will not eat bread in poverty in that land,⁠" refers to something spiritual, i.e. that the word לחם, "bread,⁠" does not refer to physical food. This would not be the first time that Torah has been compared to לחם. Compare Proverbs 9,5 where Solomon, quoting the Torah called "Wisdom,⁠" says: "come eat my bread". Seeing that it is impossible to acquire Torah and wisdom in the full sense of the word without proper preparation designed to facilitate its study, Moses may indicate here that the ideal such preparation is residence in the land of Israel, which possesses the physical conditions such as ideal climate to enable people to study Torah successfully. Scholars studying Torah in that land do not suffer from the handicaps which scholars in other countries suffer from. Those scholars belong to the category of people known as eating לחם העצבים, "the bread of troubles" (Psalms 127,2), in contrast to the people in Israel. The true wealth of the people in Israel is the quality of their Torah knowledge which was acquired with the help of the superior climate and therefore food produced in the Land of Israel. This is why Moses underlines this thought by adding לא תחסר כל בה, "nothing is lacking in that land.⁠" The blessing is anchored in the word בכל; compare Genesis 24,1 "and the Lord had blessed Avraham בכל.⁠" The reason Moses adds that the stones of the Land of Israel yield iron, is to tell us that in places where one expects to encounter only stone one will be surprised to find iron. A similar surprise awaits those who see nothing more than high piles of rock in the mountains of that land. These mountains are filled with copper. Seeing that copper and iron are used as raw materials for most of man's utensils, a land which yields such raw material can aptly be described as "lacking nothing.⁠" A people who have to import all these raw materials are at a serious disadvantage, aware of real shortcomings in their land. If the earth of a land does not yield silver or gold this is at best considered a minor shortcoming. Moses praised the availability of those ores which are needed daily in people's lives. Moses includes this kind of blessing once more at the end of the last portion of Deuteronomy when he praises the soil of Asher's section of Eretz Yisrael (33,25).
Our sages in Taanit 4 take a Midrashic approach to the words ארץ אשר אבניה ברזל by suggesting that instead of reading אבניה, "its stones,⁠" we might read this as בוניה, "its builders,⁠" i.e. the Torah scholars are possessed of a faith as strong as iron.