an allotted share: the amount someone in authority has already fixed for a person, whether a standing allowance to be drawn or a fate handed down
This word names a share that has already been decided. It belongs to a family of words built on the idea of counting something out, so the picture behind it is an amount reckoned up and then set against a particular name. Whoever receives it does not bargain over it, because the size was settled before it ever arrived.
Five of its eight appearances sit inside the bookkeeping of the temple. Hezekiah puts up a share out of his own property for the morning and evening offerings and for the sabbaths and festivals, then tells the people of Jerusalem to hand over what the priests and Levites are owed. Nehemiah uses the same word for the daily allowances of the singers and gatekeepers, and again at the moment those allowances stop arriving and the Levites walk off to their fields to feed themselves. In these texts a portion is a line in a budget that keeps worship running, and the whole crisis of Nehemiah 13 is that the line went unpaid.
The other three appearances take that same accountant's word and turn it on a person's future. Fire, sulfur and a scorching wind are "the portion of their cup" for the wicked. The king's enemies will be "the portion of jackals". Jerusalem is told, "This is your lot, the share I have measured out to you." The force of the image comes straight from the ordinary use: what God serves out is as fixed, and as certain to arrive, as a ration on a temple ledger.
Hebrew has several words in this neighborhood, and they divide the work between them:
- the lot cast to settle a matter, and the destiny that casting stands for, is גּוֹרָל, which stands right beside this word in Jeremiah 13:25
- a share you hold as your own, above all a family's piece of land, is חֵלֶק
- the helping of food handed round at a feast is the close relative מָנָה
This word covers none of those three. It is the amount that someone in charge has already fixed.