Isaiah 21:14 · World English Bible
Isaiah 21:14 Meaning They Brought Water to Him Who Was
They brought water to him who was thirsty. The inhabitants of the land of Tema met the fugitives with their bread.
What does Isaiah 21:14 mean?
Karuṇā: Compassion Compassion is the heart moving toward another's pain. The fugitives come off the caravan road with the sword behind them, cracked lips, dust in their clothes, and the people of Tema feel that dryness in their own throats.
From the Buddhism reading below.
Isaiah 21:14 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Buddhism
BUDDHISM
Buddhism
Karuṇā: Compassion Compassion is the heart moving toward another's pain. The fugitives come off the caravan road with the sword behind them, cracked lips, dust in their clothes, and the people of Tema feel that dryness in their own throats. Their feet start moving before anyone asks who these people are or whether they deserve help.
Paṭisanthāra: Hospitality Hospitality in its plain material form is drink and bread set before a stranger. Tema's inhabitants go out and meet the fugitives instead of waiting to be knocked on, and that is the whole shape of welcome: the host closes the distance. Meeting them out on the road spares exhausted people the last and hardest mile.
Dāna: Giving Giving is the open hand. Water and bread sit at the bottom of every list, the two things a body cannot do without, and that is what keeps this gift clean; nobody hands over a waterskin in the desert to look generous. The thirst it meets is the whole measure of the gift.
Kāladāna: The timely gift A timely gift lands at the hour of need. Water is worth little in a well-stocked house and worth everything to someone who has been walking since dawn with an empty skin, so the same cup changes value with the hour. Tema's people do not wait to hear the full story or set a proper table; the bread goes out while the fugitives are still on the road.
Puñña: Merit Merit is the good an action leaves behind inside the one who does it. Water poured for a stranger soaks into the giver as well, since each cup carried out builds the habit of the open hand a little deeper. Long after the caravans of Dedan have moved on and the glory of Kedar has failed, what these people keep is the shape their hearts took while they were hauling jars.
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Live Isaiah 21:14 today
- If a message has been sitting in your phone from someone who needs something small and doable, a ride, a meal, twenty dollars, answer it today rather than when you feel more organized. The thing they need is usually plainer than you think.
- With one person, close the distance instead of waiting for them to cross it. Carry the coffee to their desk, pull up outside instead of texting "let me know if you need anything," meet them at the door of the hard conversation.
- When you are rushed and someone in the line or the parking lot or the group chat is clearly struggling, give the one plain thing you actually have: your place in line, the charger, a straight answer. The hurry is real and the cup of water still takes ten seconds.
Who around me is already thirsty, and what would it cost me to get there first?
The same truth in other traditions
Pirkei Avot 1:5
Let the door of your house stand wide open, and let the poor sit at your table. Welcome is measured by who can walk in without explaining themselves.
Stoicism · Seneca, On Benefits
A gift given late, after much deliberating, loses most of its worth. What makes help real is that it arrives while the need is still burning.
Tao Te Ching 8
The highest good acts like water: it goes to the low places and feeds whatever it finds there, without arguing about who deserves it.
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