Casting Lots to Determine God’s Will
Ezekiel 21
Introduction
Some decisions are just too big to be left to chance. There are some decisions in life that are so huge, you wouldn’t dare flip a coin on them.
What career you want to have.
Who to marry.
Which house to buy.
Whether to challenge your 6-year-old to a Fortnite rematch after he destroyed you the last time.
These are weighty matters to consider. And yet, you would actually see people in the Bible casting lots to make some of these types of big decisions. Decisions of going into battle, figuring out who was guilty of a crime- and even matters of life and death.
Do I think it’s weird that Bible characters would use games of chance to make important decisions? Not necessarily. People make bad decisions all the time. That’s why we’ve had Kathleen Kennedy running the Star Wars franchise since 2012.
It’s not necessarily weird to see people making important decisions in ways left up to random chance.
The weird think about it to me…is that it worked.
God often worked through people casting lots- literally playing games of chance- to reveal His will to them and to guide them to the correct choice.
I find this to be weird, and I’d like to explore why it’s in the Bible.
Because if God revealed His will like that to them, would God reveal His will like that to me?
Turn to Ezekiel 21, and let’s get weird.
[theme music]
Ezekiel 21 - Guiding Nebuchadnezzar
Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. This is Luke Taylor, and today we’re going to be talking about how God used casting lots and other games of chance to reveal His will in the Old Testament, and why He would do that; and also talk about whether He still does things like that today, or if there’s a new way that He guides us.
And I had always been aware of this practice of casting lots as I’d read through the Bible and study how God guided people. It might say “so and so” cast lots, and the lots landed on “blank.” And they would go on from there. But I never really dug down to understand what was going on.
And the place this journey started for me was in Ezekiel 21. This chapter of Ezekiel is called The Song of the Sword. This is when God was judging Israel by letting them be conquered by the Babylonians. Last week we looked at some stories from Daniel, and we talked about how there were these various world empires. Well this was during Babylon’s time. And God has decided that He is handing a lot of the world over to the Babylonians- including His own territory of Israel.
And in this chapter, God is revealing to Ezekiel how He guided Nebuchadnezzar to besiege Jerusalem. We’ll pick it up at verse 18.
Ezekiel 21:18-20
18 The word of the Lord came to me: 19 “Now you, son of man, mark out two roads that the sword of Babylon’s king can take. Both of them should originate from the same land. And make a signpost at the fork in the road to each city. 20 Mark out a road that the sword can take to Rabbah of the Ammonites and to Judah into fortified Jerusalem.
So what I want you to visualize here is that King Nebuchadnezzar of the Babylonians is standing at a crossroads. A fork in the road. He is going on a conquest through the Middle East, conquering one nation after another. He’s already conquered all the way from the territory of Iraq down to the territory of Egypt, but now he’s on his way back and he’s picking up victories at some of the places he missed the first time around.
And he’s standing at a fork in the road trying to decide which way to go next. To the left is Ammon, one of the cities on his list; and to the right is Jerusalem, another enticing prospect. He has a decision to make, and this is how he makes it:
Verse 21
21 For the king of Babylon stands at the split in the road, at the fork of the two roads, to practice divination: he shakes the arrows, consults the idols, and observes the liver.
He uses three methods to decide where to go next. These are all considered divination. They first is that he shakes the arrows. This is similar to drawing straws, only he used arrows. Perhaps someone had a quiver with some arrows in them, and different arrows had either “Ammon” or “Jerusalem” written on them, and he shook it up and drew one at random to see where to go. It’s essentially like flipping a coin. Only this was a way that ancient peoples would sometimes make decisions, and to them, they ascribed a lot of meaning to random chance. This is a practice known as belomancy today.
It also said he consulted the teraphim, which were the household gods. In other words, asking idols. And then the third method Nebuchadnezzar used was looking at the liver. This was an ancient practice not for the squeamish. This involved someone who was a witch-doctor-type of guy who would slaughter an animal and then start separating out its internal organs, would would derive all kinds of meanings from the characteristics of these organs. For example, they would examine a liver for marking, and they believe that these markings somehow expressed a divine will about which way to go. This is a practice called hepatoscopy. Creepy stuff.
Obviously, all of this ranges from stupid to pagan to demonic. This would be a terrible way to make important decisions. And yet, it works. This tells Nebuchadnezzar right where God wants him to go. Ezekiel 21 says that God uses this to tell Nebuchadnezzar to attack Jerusalem.
Ezekiel 21:22
22 The answer marked Jerusalem appears in his right hand, indicating that he should set up battering rams, give the order to slaughter, raise a battle cry, set battering rams against the gates, build a ramp, and construct a siege wall.
God directs Nebuchadnezzar toward Jerusalem, it said. Conduct a siege against the city.
Unbeknown to Nebuchadnezzar, he is acting out God’s divine will. God wanted to punish Jerusalem and have Babylon engage in siege warfare against the city. When the the Israelites hear this prophecy of Ezekiel’s, they would probably doubt it, that this is too far-fetched for God to use this kind of pagan methodology to guide Nebuchadnezzar. No way God would do that, they say. That doesn’t sound like God.
Verses 23 and 24
23 It will seem like false divination to those who have sworn an oath to the Babylonians, but it will draw attention to their guilt so that they will be captured.
24 “Therefore, this is what the Lord God says: Because you have drawn attention to your guilt, exposing your transgressions, so that your sins are revealed in all your actions—since you have done this, you will be captured by them.
Criticizing Nebuchadnezzar’s methodology will be cold comfort when those people come knocking on Jerusalem’s doors. God says you may not like my method of bringing Nebuchadnezzar here, but nevertheless, he’s coming.
But what about for us, thousands of years later. Why would God reveal His will to Nebuchadnezzar using these methods that sound more like palm reading or rolling the dice?
Is anything random?
And yet we see that God does things like this frequently in the Bible, and it’s usually described as the process of casting lots. What exactly is casting lots? We aren’t exactly sure, but it’s not so much pagan as much as it’s like the first thing Nebuchadnezzar did: drawing arrows. Here is how GotQuestions.org describes it:
The practice of casting lots is mentioned seventy times in the Old Testament and seven times in the New Testament. In spite of the many references to casting lots in the Old Testament, nothing is known about the actual lots themselves. They could have been sticks of various lengths, flat stones like coins, or some kind of dice; but their exact nature is unknown. The closest modern practice to casting lots is likely flipping a coin.
So we say, OK, casting lots, games of chance- similar to gambling, such as how the Roman guards cast lots over Jesus’ clothes while He hung on the cross- this doesn’t seem like the most spiritual way to make your decisions. “God, should we go to Disney Land or Universal Studios for our family vacation this year? Let’s cast lots to figure it out.” This doesn’t seem like the most spiritual way to determine God’s will. And yet, as I said, God respected it. God used that method to reveal His will several times in the Old Testament.
For example, when Jonah was on that ship hiding out to go to Tarshish, and the sailors were trying to figure out who had made the gods so mad that their ship was about to be overturned in the storm, it says this in
Jonah 1:7
7 And they said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah.
Their practice of casting lots- something supposedly just left up to chance- directed them to identifying Jonah as the source of their trouble.
And how did it work? It probably went something like this: they had everybody on the ship stand on one side or the other, and they flipped a coin to determine who the culprit was, and narrowed it down to one group. Then they took that group and split it in two and flipped another coin, and narrowed it down some more. Kind of like the game Clue. They just kept narrowing it down and narrowing it down and narrowing it down until they said, “It was Jonah with the candlestick in the conservatory.”
And Jonah could have said, “Guys, surely you don’t think I’m really the guilty party here just because you flipped a coin a few times and it landed on me.” But he didn’t do that. Casting the lots was legit, and Jonah was like, “Yep, this is my fault, the storm is happening because I’m trying to run from God.” Casting lots worked.
Perhaps you say, “Well Nebuchadnezzar or these sailors were a bunch of pagans. Maybe God talks to non-believers that way, but that’s not how He talked to His own people.” But that would be wrong.
In Joshua chapter 7, someone in Israel has sinned by stealing some of the items from the wreckage of Jericho when God had told them not to do that. And now their army is cursed and can’t win any battles. And Joshua and the Israelites are trying to figure out who did it, because they have no idea who stole from the wreckage of Jericho. So this is what God said to Joshua.
Joshua 7:14
In the morning therefore you shall be brought near by your tribes. And the tribe that the Lord takes by lot shall come near by clans. And the clan that the Lord takes shall come near by households. And the household that the Lord takes shall come near man by man.
God tells Joshua to cast lots and that He will help them narrow it down. It’s extra weird because Joshua is already in conversation with God. God and Joshua are pretty well acquainted, probably on a first-name basis with each other. At this point, God probably just called him “Josh.”
And yet, God doesn’t just tell him who stole the items from Jericho. He says He will reveal it when they cast lots. So here’s how that shook out:
Verses 16-18
16 So Joshua rose early in the morning and brought Israel near tribe by tribe, and the tribe of Judah was taken. 17 And he brought near the clans of Judah, and the clan of the Zerahites was taken. And he brought near the clan of the Zerahites man by man, and Zabdi was taken. 18 And he brought near his household man by man, and Achan the son of Carmi, son of Zabdi, son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, was taken.
And Achan was the guy who had stolen the devoted items. He was found out and exposed before all Israel. And God used this practice of casting lots to reveal that.
And as a bystander, we could have said: that’s stupid. This is all random. Why should that be the way to determine it. But this process works repeatedly throughout the Bible. Just like Jonah, Achan says, “yep, it was me, I stole the items from Jericho.”
I won’t go through an exhaustive list, but casting lots was used to make important decisions in places like Joshua 18, I Chronicles 24 through 26 and Nehemiah 11. It was used so often and so reliably, it caused Solomon to write in
Proverbs 16:33
The lot is cast into the lap,
but its every decision is from the Lord.
So someone might say: can I roll a dice to determine God’s will? Can I flip a coin? And if I said no, you shouldn’t do that, you might say: but it’s biblical. God did it in Joshua 7 and 18 and I Chronicles and Jonah and Nehemiah- and it worked! So shouldn’t I trust in the Bible?
Or here’s something else you may be thinking: those are all Old Testament. God doesn’t do that anymore in the New Testament. But I can’t let you off the hook that easily; you might be surprised to find out that God even used casting lots in the New Testament. I’ll give you an example in the book of Acts, when the 11 disciples- now called apostles- are trying to find a twelfth guy, because Judas was dead, and they felt that they needed a replacement as they set out on the Great Commission.
So the twelfth spot comes down to two guys: Justus and Matthias. And here’s what it says:
Acts 1:26
And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias, and he was numbered with the eleven apostles.
This is kind of significant. They’re picking a twelfth apostle, and they use lots to do it. This is carrying out the Great Commission. This is taking the Gospel to the ends of the earth. This is building the church. This is after Jesus. Revelation says the names of the 12 apostles are written on the foundations of heaven. And they basically decide the 12th guy by playing eeny-meeny-miney-Matthias.
Was that right? Was that wrong? In their defense, they had a lot of biblical precedent for this. All thought out the Old Testament, you could make decisions this way.
And the big question for us: can we make decisions that way as well?
By the Spirit
Well the Bible does not specifically say we can’t, but I believe there’s great significance when we keep reading the book of Acts and observe what happens immediately after this moment.
That verse we just read in Acts 1 was the very last verse of the chapter.
And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias, and he was numbered with the eleven apostles.
After that, we keep reading, and the very next verse kicks off Acts 2. And in Acts 2, everything changes.
Acts 2:1-4
When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
They make a decision by casting lots, and immediately after that- I mean, immediately- right after- the Holy Spirit falls on them. And making decisions by casting lots is never mentioned again in the rest of the Bible.
In a commentary by Daniel Kidner on the book of Proverbs, when talking about that verse I read earlier that says, “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord,” he says this about the practice of casting lots today: …God’s last use of this method was, significantly, the last event before Pentecost…
Everything changed when the Holy Spirit fell. Now, the Spirit is supposed to be our guide. So if it doesn’t feel right to do something like cast lots or flip a coin to decide what God wants us to do- guess what- it doesn’t feel right because it’s not right. That’s not what God intends for us to do today. He intends for us to seek the Holy Spirit.
Romans 8:3-6
By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.
And verse 14
For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.
The expectation for a Christian is that you’ll be led by the Spirit. Now maybe you say, how can I know if I’m being led by the Spirit? How can I recognize the Spirit’s voice? Well, we’ll talk about some of those things as we wrap up today.
Next Time
Next time on this podcast… scatalogical language
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If you want to get in touch with me: weirdstuffinthebible@gmail.com
I kinda got out of the habit of doing a mailbag because I received so many emails about a month ago that it was too much to share. But shoutout to Sheree who sent me a kind message this past week about how she has really been getting into her bible and God is making it come alive to her like never before. And I’m so thankful that my podcast could be a small part of that and that she’d take the time to write in.
Shoutout also to a young man named Joshua in New Zealand and sent a very kind email a couple weeks ago as well.
Closing Thoughts
After the Spirit fell in Acts 2, throughout the rest of the book, we constantly see the Holy Spirit telling the apostles where to go. When the apostles- including Paul- had to make a decision about where to go on their missionary journeys, there’s no more casting lots. The Holy Spirit would tell them where to go.
In Acts 8:29
the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and join this chariot.”
The Holy Spirit would tell them where NOT to go.
Acts 16:6-7
6 And they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. 7 And when they had come up to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.
How? I don’t know. Maybe they just didn’t have peace about it. They were led by the Spirit, not casting lots. When they came to a crossroads, they didn’t consult the arrows or slaughter an animal and look at its liver. They were led by the Spirit. It’s a completely different method of spiritual direction than what was provided in the Old Testament. A more personal method.
When they were trying to figure out who would go with them on these journeys, the Holy Spirit told them who it was to be.
Acts 13:2
the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”
When they tried to decide which OT rules to follow in the NT, and they had a council about it to sort these things out, they said in
Acts 15:28
it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us
You know what I’m gathering here? It would be very very beneficial to your Christian walk to get more sensitive to the voice of the Holy Spirit. To where He can say, “go over here, don’t go over there,” and you just know.
Another way God speaks: through His Word. I shared last week that the same day, my bible reading on Numbers 27- sheep without a shepherd. God confirmed it to me with His Word.]
Now, I have a few guidelines for how to be led by the Spirit, and for the sake of time, I won’t go into all of them right here today. However, if you’d like to receive that information, sign up for the Weird Stuff in the Bible newsletter. There’s a link to sign up in the show notes for today’s episode. All you have to do is put in your email; I don’t need your name or any personal information. And this Sunday, I’ll send out an email with three ways you can be led by the Spirit so that you aren’t led by the flesh.
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This week’s newsletter will start with a personal life and ministry update. If you want to skip all that, you can just scroll down to the section called “Rabbit Trails” and you’ll find the rabbit trail for today’s episode, three ways to be led by the Spirit.
But in closing I’ll say this: when you’re led by the Spirit, He can cause you to do some things that might be strange to outside observers.
Look at Paul in Acts 20:22-23
22 And now, behold, I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, 23 except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me.
Now, knowing that would not probably give any of us confidence or peace- that if we go to this or that city to be a missionary for Jesus, that we’re going to be afflicted. Imprisoned. Tortured.
So why did Paul do it anyway? Because He knew the difference in an emotional peace of what made Paul feel good and the peace that comes with following God and doing His will.
Sometimes following God’s will is not the easy thing, not the thing that will make you feel good, not the fun thing to do. It might look weird to everyone else.
But you know what: it’s a lot weirder to me to cast lots for major life decisions, or to flip a coin, or to consult the arrows, or to look at an animal’s liver. Thankfully, God’s given us a better way to make those decisions today: we can be guided by the Holy Spirit.
Being led by the Spirit can lead you to do some weird things. And I hope you’re willing to be a little more weird today, too. Thanks for listening, God bless you for sticking around until the end, and we’ll see you next time on Weird Stuff in the Bible.