Pulelulu Tisema 13, 2023
Casting Lots
‘Oku Nau Talotalo
OBADIAH 11
ON THE DAY THAT YOU STOOD ALOOF, ON THE DAY THAT STRANGERS CARRIED OFF HIS WEALTH AND FOREIGNERS ENTERED HIS GATES AND CAST LOTS FOR JERUSALEM, YOU WERE LIKE ONE OF THEM.
‘OPATAIA 11
‘I he ‘aho na‘a ke tu‘u ‘o hanga mai, ‘i he ‘aho na‘e taki pōpula ai hono mālohinga ‘e ha kau muli, pea hū ki hono matanikolo ha fa‘ahinga kehe, ‘o nau fai talotalo ki Selusalema, ko koe foki na‘a ke tatau tofu pē mo ha taha ‘iate kinautolu.
Goral were small stones that were cast to make decisions. Drawing straws or flipping a coin are modern equivalents. Goral were used to decide between goats (Lev. 16:8), to pinpoint the guilty (Jon. 1:7), to divvy up Israel's land among the tribes (Num. 26:55). When Obadiah says that strangers (probably Babylonians) "cast goral for Jerusalem," he likely means not the city itself but the city's inhabitants, the POWs. Nahum also speaks of lots being cast to determine who gets valuable prisoners (3:10). This dehumanization of victims, treating them like commodities, is one of the charges that Obadiah levels against Edom in this brief but brawny book of doom written against Israel's ancient brother to the south.
"They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast goral," the Messiah prays (Ps. 22:18). All four Evangelists record the Roman soldiers doing just that after they performed their gory crucifixion duties. There hung our bleeding God, dehumanized, dying, dead. But the Messiah also knew, from Psalm 16, a song of resurrection (Acts 2:24-32), that the only goral that mattered was the one his Father held in his hand (Ps. 16:5), the lot in the beautiful inheritance of resurrection (v. 6).
Holy Father, "you are my Lord; I have no good apart from you" (Ps. 16:2).
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