Zohar Bereshit — Folio 108b

“His wife looked back from behind him”: from behind the Divine Presence, or, according to Rabbi Yose, from behind Lot, since the destroyer followed him and overturned whatever he left behind; when she turned her face, she saw the destroyer and became a pillar of salt. Rabbi Eleazar and Rabbi Yose examine “a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity”: God divided the peoples and lands among appointed ministers, but in the Land of Israel no other minister rules, He alone does; it is nourished first, and then the whole world. The word “in it” alludes to the holiness of the land, where faith and blessing from above rest. On “like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt,” the Zohar explains that Sodom and Egypt resembled the garden of the Lord in their abundance, Egypt being watered by the Nile.