Reference: Envy
Hastings
Envy leads to strife, and division, and railing, and hatred, and sometimes to murder. The Bible classes it with these things (Ro 1:29; 13:13; 1Co 3:3; 2Co 12:20; Ga 5:21; 1Ti 6:4; Tit 3:3; Jas 3:14,16). It is the antipode of Christian love. Envy loveth not, and love envieth not (1Co 13:4). Bacon closes his essay on 'Envy' with this sentence: 'Envy is the vilest affection and the most depraved; for which cause it is the proper attribute of the Devil, who is called, The envious man, that soweth tares amongst the wheat by night; as it always cometh to pass, that Envy worketh subtilly and in the dark, and to the prejudice of good things, such as is the wheat.' Chrysostom said: 'As a moth gnaws a garment, so doth envy consume a man, to be a living anatomy, a skeleton, to be a lean and pale carcass, quickened with a fiend.' These are Scriptural estimates. Envy is devilish, and absolutely inconsistent with the highest life. Examples abound in the Bible, such as are suggested by the relations between Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Rachel and Leah, Joseph and his brothers, Saul and David, Haman and Mordecai, the elder brother and the prodigal son, the Roman evangelists of Php 1:15 and the Apostle Paul, and many others.
D. A. Hayes.