qinyan

This noun is built straight on the everyday verb for getting hold of something (קָנָה), the word used for buying, trading, and coming to own. So it does not name property in general. It names the part of what a household holds that it went out and gained: bought, bartered for, or built up by work. That is why it sits so easily next to a phrase like "which he had gained in Canaan" and why it is never the word for tribal land handed down by grant.

In the narratives it is close to a set phrase. The livestock (מִקְנֶה) gets counted first, and then this word sweeps up everything else the household owns:

• Jacob drives his herds out of Paddan-aram along with all the holdings he had gained there.
• Esau moves away from his brother with his family, his animals, and everything he had built up in Canaan.
• The men of Shechem size up Jacob's family and ask whose their herds and holdings will be in the end.
• The Levites are given towns and open pasture for their animals and their holdings, but no share of the land itself.
• Ezekiel's invader comes down on a people who have quietly built up herds and holdings at the center of the earth.

Two places pull the word past plain goods. Proverbs 4:7 turns it toward the getting itself, telling the learner that whatever else he is out gaining, the thing to gain is understanding. Psalm 104:24 turns it upward: the earth is full of what belongs to God, and translators have long divided over whether that means his riches or the living things he made, since the verb behind the noun can also mean to bring something into being.

One verse shows how far the word could reach in an ancient household. Leviticus 22:11 uses it of a person bought with silver, who is counted with the priest's own household and therefore may eat the holy food that a hired worker may not.