: Why do we say: bore pri ha'adama - but: hamotzi lechem min ha'aretz? : Why not: bore pri ha'aretz, or: hamotzi lechem min ha'adama? My guess is in two parts: 1) For fruit, the bracha needs to distinguish between fruit of the ground, and fruit of trees. "Eretz" is a more generic term, referring to the planet as a whole, rather than the dirt as opposed to trees, and is therefore unsuitable for this purpose. 2) For bread, the wording is taken from a pasuk: Tehillim 104:14. (If you want to know why that pasuk used aretz instead of adamah, fine, but that's a different question.) Akiva Miller