A PORTION, a share — the piece that falls to you when something is divided up, from a root meaning to divide or apportion. Where nachalah looks forward through the generations, chelek looks at the act of division itself: it is what the lot assigns, and it can be a share of land, of plunder, or of food. ⚠ The two are paired at Numbers 18:20, where Aaron is denied both and then given God as both. The phrase becomes a formula the later books reuse for anyone who has traded a material stake for a different kind: Jehovah is my chelek, says my soul (Lamentations 3:24, not yet on these pages), and Psalm 16's Jehovah is the portion of my inheritance, which stacks the two nouns the same way this verse does. → first discussed at Num 18:20