Later text
Acts 1:26BSB
Then they cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias; so he was added to the eleven apostles.
Intertextuality Pair
Allusion
Later text
Acts 1:26BSB
Then they cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias; so he was added to the eleven apostles.
Earlier text
After Aaron casts lots for the two goats, one for the LORD and the other for the scapegoat,
Earlier text
Indeed, the land must be divided by lot; they shall receive their inheritance according to the names of the tribes of their fathers.
Earlier text
The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.
The apostles “cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias” (Acts 1:26) — the last recorded use of a practice woven through Israel’s life: the lot that apportioned the land (Numbers 26:55), the lot that on the Day of Atonement chose between the two goats (Leviticus 16:8), and the proverb that grounds them all — “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD” (Proverbs 16:33). The lot is not chance but a means of submitting a decision to God’s sovereign disposal, fitting for a choice the eleven had no authority to make alone. It is telling that the practice appears here for the last time in Scripture: once the Spirit is poured out at Pentecost, the church is led not by lot but by the indwelling Spirit of the ascended Christ. The lot points beyond itself to the God who rules every outcome — the same God who, on the Day of Atonement it recalls, ordained the true and final sacrifice in Christ.