70 BRENT A. STRAWN Hebrew Bible, and the practice of cleromancy so varied in the ancient Near East, that these questions are probably unanswerable. The second consideration is that in the vast majority of instances where lots (or lot casting) are mentioned in the Old Testament, the language is used not of foreigners at all, but of Israelites. Outside of Jonah 1,7, only five other passages speak of foreigners employing the practice: Esth 3,7; 9,24 ; Joel 4,3; Obad 11; and Nah 3,10. All other instances concern intra- Israelite use of lots for a rather wide variety of purposes, the majority of which are connected to Yahweh (see, e.g., Josh 18,8.10; 1 Sam 10,20-24; 14,41; Prov 16,33), the cult (e.g., Lev 16,8-10; Neh 10,35), or the land of Israel itself (Num 36,2; Josh 14,1-2; 15,1) 13. Moreover, of the five additional passages (besides Jonah) that mention foreigners casting lots, at least four reflect an intra-Israelite perspective — mentioning Israel or Yahweh in some fashion. In Esth 3,7 and 9,24 the casting of the lot determines the day of the pogrom against the Jews in Persia. However, as the story proceeds, through an amazing reversal, this date turns out to be a day of great victory for the Jews, celebrated in posterity as Purim (see Esth 9,26-32). In Joel 4,3 and Obad 11, enemies or foreigners cast lots for Yahweh’s people or for Jerusalem, respectively. This leaves only Nah 3,10 as a description of the “ native practice” of foreigners without reference to anything Israelite or Yahwistic. In this passage, lots are said to have been cast over the nobles of Thebes following its fall. Of course, it is an Israelite, Yahwistic prophet — Nahum — who reports this information, so that it, too, could be said to York, NY 1990) 111, who assumes some sort of inscribed shards for the lots mentioned in Jonah 1:7 (similarly TRIBLE, “The Book of Jonah”, 498), but who also notes that the Targum apparently presumed some kind of dice since they could be rolled on the ground ( dbÃ). Note TDOT II, 450-51, more generally: “ wo o d and stone could easily be made into lots and were accessible everywhere. ” CRYER, Divination in Ancient Israel, 277: “Clearly, there is no question 13 of a ‘secular’ procedure of lot-casting here; the references to sacrifice and temple service show that casting the gôral took place under divine auspices”. ¯ Although not entirely clear, it seems that Cryer’s “here” refers to Jonah 1,7. Cf. more generally TLOT I, 311: “all usages of gôral can be describe[d] as ¯ theological ” ; KITZ, “The Hebrew Terminology”, 214: “lot casting is generally . . . conducted before deities, because the result constitutes their ‘decision’”; and J. LIMBURG, Jonah. A Commentary (OTL; Louisville, KY 1993) 51, who states that the sailors make “theological assumptions” in connection with the lot casting. One such assumption is that the storm is divine punishment; another is that “God communicates through the casting of lots”. TRIBLE, “The Book of Jonah ”, 498 writes similarly: “Theologically, the use of lots to disclose the truth elevates chance to the level of divine will.”