A LOT — a marked stone or token drawn or cast to decide a question thought to be in God's hands (the 'let God point' procedure): 'the LOT is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from Jehovah' (Proverbs 16:33). Casting lots divides the promised land among the tribes (Numbers 26:55 — Joshua's tribal allotments are goral country), exposes Achan (Joshua 7:14-18), nearly condemns Jonathan (1 Samuel 14:41-42), and chooses Saul as king (1 Samuel 10:20-21). ⚠ In Jonah 1:7 pagan sailors cast lots to find whose guilt has raised the storm, and it falls on Jonah — the same procedure Edom had just thrown OVER Jerusalem as it fell (Obadiah 11). Its last appearances frame the Gospels: soldiers cast lots for Jesus' clothing (Matthew 27:35, fulfilling Psalm 22:18) and the eleven cast lots to replace Judas with Matthias (Acts 1:26) — the last time in Scripture, just before the Spirit comes and it is never used again. By extension goral means one's allotted PORTION or destiny — Daniel's last word of hope: 'you shall stand up to your LOT at the end of the days' (Daniel 12:13), a share with your name on it, not a game of chance. ⭐ Numbers 26:55-56 sets the lot against arithmetic and keeps both: the land is apportioned by head-count (v54) and by lot (v55), and v56 puts them in one sentence — al-pi ha-goral, by the MOUTH of the lot. The usual reconstruction is that the lot fixed where each tribe landed and the numbers fixed how much. Numbers 33:54 restates the same law almost word for word on the plains of Moab, changing one letter's worth of grammar — the first verb turns from singular to plural mid-verse, a shift only the ASV tries to carry into English. ⭐ Numbers 34:2 shows where the metaphor comes from: before that chapter says ‘by lot’ at v13 it says the land will FALL to you (tippol), because falling is what a lot physically does. The Douay-Rheims alone makes it explicit, printing ‘fallen into your possession by lot’ in v2 itself. → first discussed at Jonah 1:7