Genesis 26:14 Meaning He Had Possessions of Flocks

Puñña: Merit Merit is the pleasant fruit that ripens from good action already done. Flocks and herds swelling for a guest living on someone else's land arrive the way a harvest arrives, out of seed sown long before, which is why the hundredfold crop in Gerar needed no clever farming to account for it. Fruit of this kind ripens once and gets eaten, so a full pen reports what a man did, not what he is doing now.

Pariggaha: Holdings, what a person grasps around Pariggaha is the taking of something as mine. Flocks counted as possessions, herds counted as possessions: the animals are the same animals any herdsman in Gerar could watch grazing, and the word laid over them works like a fence. A great household swells the same way, by drawing a line around people who eat and sleep and quarrel, and calling everything inside it his.

Lābha-sakkāra: Gain and honor Gain and the standing that follows it come with a hook set in them. Fat herds are visible from the road, and the same animals that mark Isaac as blessed mark him as worth resenting, which is why his wells are soon stopped with dirt and he is asked to leave. Prosperity does not sit quietly in a valley where somebody else already lives.

Issā: Envy Envy is the mind's refusal to bear another's good fortune. The Philistines lost no grain and no grazing when Isaac's herds grew, yet a bigger flock in the next pasture works on a person like a splinter under the skin. Envy wants the other man's pile lowered more than it wants its own raised, which is why the answer was dirt in his wells instead of digging their own.

Muditā: Gladness at another's good fortune Muditā is the pleasure of seeing someone else do well. It stands open to the Philistines in the same moment envy does, since the herds are there either way and the only live question is what the sight of them does inside the watcher. Gladness takes nothing from anyone and costs nothing to give, and a neighbor's good year is free to enjoy.