Nehemiah 9:25 Meaning They Took Fortified Cities and a Rich

Upādāna: Clinging Clinging is the grip that takes hold and will not open. Fortified cities, cisterns already dug, vineyards already bearing: none of it was made by the hands that seized it, yet once possessed it started to feel like self. A house full of good things holds its owner as tightly as the owner holds it, the way a hand closed around a coin can pick up nothing else.

Bhojane mattaññutā: Knowing the measure in food Knowing the measure is the sense of where enough lies. Eating and being filled is the plain business of a body, and the olive groves and fruit trees were given for exactly that. Fullness slid past its own edge here, like a guest who keeps eating at a table where the plates are never allowed to empty.

Pamāda: Heedlessness Heedlessness is the drowsiness that comfort brings on. Fatness carries a slowness with it: full stomach, walls that hold, nothing pressing, no reason to look up. Ease of that kind puts a household to sleep with the doors unlocked, and the rebellion recorded in the next breath of the prayer comes out of the sleep, not out of the food.

Assāda: Gratification Gratification is the sweetness a thing gives while it is being enjoyed. Delight taken in oil, wine and fruit is honest as far as it goes, and there is no fault in tasting what is sweet. Sweetness makes poor ground to stand on, since a vineyard yields one year and fails the next, and a life built on the taste rises and falls with the harvest.

Kataññutā: Gratitude, knowing what was done for you Gratitude is the memory of a gift together with the hand that gave it. Delight ran toward "your great goodness" and then settled on the goodness itself, the pleasant weight of it, while the one being addressed slipped out of view. Turning back toward the giver is what the Levites are doing as they say all this out loud, and naming the fat years plainly is the first step of that turn.