This verb appears once in Homer (Iliad 21.347, web address 1, in a simile comparing the drying, under Hephaistos' fire, of the plain which the river Skamandros had flooded, to the drying of a recently soaked a)lwh/ -- here probably "cultivated plot", less likely "threshing-floor" -- by a north wind, whereat "he who e)qei/rh| it" rejoices).
The verb has no agreed etymology, but the context requires a meaning like "tend" or "till". The cultivator's satisfaction would be concurred in by the chorus of Aristophanes' Wasps (264-5: "the crops that do not ripen early need rain to fall and then a north wind to blow on them"). Ancient scholars evidently did not know what e)qei/rh| meant, but were mostly convinced that it was derived from e)/qos ("habit") or from the rare participle e)/qwn, "habitually, persistently" (Iliad 9.540, 16.260) and offered glosses similar to the Suda's (with the exception of Hesychius epsilon634, who glosses "thinks worthy of being cared for").
For care exercised "habitually" see already epsilon 319; and for "habitually" cf. epsilon 329, epsilon 2592, pi 551.