klēros

A lot was a small object: a pebble, a piece of broken pottery, a marked stick. It was dropped into a jar and shaken out, or simply thrown on the ground, and wherever it landed gave the answer. Because nobody could steer the result, lots settled the kinds of questions that would otherwise start a fight, such as who takes which piece of land, whose turn of duty comes next, or which of several men gets a job.

The Greek word names the token itself and not the practice, so it almost always travels next to a verb of throwing or handing out. All four Gospels use it of the soldiers dividing the clothes of the crucified Jesus, echoing the wording of Psalm 22:18, and that scene is the one most readers already picture. In Acts 1:26 the eleven use lots to fill the place Judas left, and the account says the lot "fell on" Matthias.

The same object carries very different assumptions depending on who is holding it. Roman soldiers throwing for a garment are dividing loot and expect nothing but a random result. Israel's Scriptures treat the falling of the lot as a decision God himself makes, which is why the Hebrew word behind it (גּוֹרָל) is used for the way the promised land was divided, and why the disciples pray before they cast. Nothing in the object itself tells you which of those two things is going on.

Once the lot has fallen, what it hands over gets the same name as the token that handed it over. So the word slides from the object to the result: the strip of land, the turn of service, the standing among a group. This is how the New Testament uses it most of the time, and the weight always falls on the giver rather than the receiver. A share of this kind is something handed to you.

Three kinds of share turn up:

• a post in a shared task, as when Judas is said to have received his place in the work of the apostles
• a stake in the matter under discussion, which Peter tells Simon he has no claim on at all
• the inheritance God gives to the people he has set apart, pictured as a share in the light

The Old Testament background is the dividing of Canaan, where each tribe received its territory by lot and the priests were given none because the Lord himself was their portion. When the New Testament writers describe what belongs to believers, they reach for this word rather than the word for a family's settled inherited land (נַחֲלָה). What is promised is not a plot of ground but a place among God's own people.

First Peter stretches the word one step further and uses the plural for people: the groups of believers who have been assigned to particular elders. The point of that sentence is that a leader has been given a share to care for, not a property to rule.