Happiness...Part 2

So, I was going to think on the idea of our "souls"...but I ended up back at happiness. We'll get to souls later...God willing! But I got thrown back into happiness because I was reading Gayle Erwin's "The Spirit Style" and he states that happiness "can't be quantified". WHAT!?!? That kinda blew me away. I had known where I was going with the whole happiness thing because I knew that in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus began with the Beatitudes which are blessings. And the Greek word used for blessing is makarios which is translated "happy". I thought that Jesus had basically outlined the formula for happiness in this Sermon...but to see Gayle Erwin say you can't define happiness stopped me in my tracks. So I decide to start all over and go back to the very beginning. Blessings didn't start on the Sermon on the Mount. They have been around for a long, long time.
“And God blessed them, saying, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.’” (Genesis 1:22) Thus begins God’s interest in His creation. The next day He creates mankind. “Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” (Genesis 1:28) His very first words to animals and then humans are a blessing. So what does it mean to be blessed by God? What did this entail? What exactly does Moses (the author of Genesis) mean when he writes “God blessed them”?
A word study of “blessed” results in the following, surprising, information:
"Blessed" (the Hebrew word barak): to bend the knees, to kneel. Its parsing (grammatical structure) is imperfect, which means it is used in the sense of being progressive, a process, and ongoing. The stem (the part of the word that is common to all its inflected variants) is piel which is difficult to interpret even for advanced scholars (which I am definitely not) but basically points to the subject doing the action in a strong and real way (the intensive nature).
At first glance, this proves to be a strange translation. This word barak is used 331 times in the Old Testament. Most all of these instances were to convey the meaning of respect or adoration; though a couple of times there was actual, physical kneeling going on. My personal feeling is that Moses, having been raised in the palace of Pharaoh, would have understood firsthand the concept of kneeling and obeisance before an exalted ruler. He also had had a particularly close relationship with God. (A short read of Exodus and Numbers will show God demonstrating His power and dominion in numerous ways both to and through Moses.) He knew without doubt that God was the Lord Creator of the world. Naturally, you would kneel to this sovereign God in adoration, praise, thanksgiving, supplication, and fear. Most Biblical encounters between humans and God (and even His messenger angels) did result in the human falling, often involuntarily, to his knees or laying prostrate on his face. So it seems that Moses wanted to directly relate this veneration of God towards His blessings. This is absolutely appropriate since all goodness does in fact stem from Him and only from Him. Thus it is before Him we must bend as we seek blessings. He is our Lord, our Sustainer, and our Source. He is our Blessing.
So I have arrived at a good understanding of where blessings come from; but the question still remains, ‘What form does blessing take?’ And, does it lead to happiness? I have some asking, seeking, and knocking to do. See you soon.