Numbers 26:55

Henry, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown, Clarke, Gill, Calvin and Keil & Delitzsch are in the public domain; Tyndale Open Study Notes © Tyndale House Publishers, CC BY-SA 4.0 — all from the Free Use Bible API (bible.helloao.org). Rashi: the Rosenbaum & Silbermann Pentateuch (public domain) and the Judaica Press and Metsudah Tanakh (CC BY), via Sefaria. Spurgeon's Treasury of David: public domain (lyteword's markdown edition, CC0).

"By lot," he says, "shall the distribution of the inheritance be made." This indeed is commanded, but when I come to the Scriptures, I see that Moses himself, to whom these things are entrusted, does not use the lot in the division of the inheritance of Reuben and Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh. And Joshua too gives an inheritance to the tribe of Judah and to Caleb apart from the lot, and gives one apart from the lot also to the tribe of Ephraim and to the half-tribe of Manasseh. In the rest the lot is cast, and the first lot comes forth for Benjamin, and thereafter for the remaining tribes. Whence I think that in that blessed inheritance of the kingdom of heaven also there will be some who do not come to the lot nor are numbered with the rest, although they are holy; but there will be a certain outstanding and exceptional inheritance for them, as there was for Caleb of the tribe of Judah and for Joshua himself the son of Nun. For just as, for example, when after a battle the provinces and the spoils are apportioned to the victors, each of the outstanding and exceptional warriors is not brought to the lot along with the rest of the soldiers in the division of the spoils, but the best and most excellent things are awarded to them by the merit of their valor, while the rest use the lot solely by the right of victory, so it seems to me that my Lord Jesus Christ also will do; for to certain ones, whom he knows to have labored more abundantly than the rest and whose magnificent deeds and lofty virtues he himself knows, to those he awards the choicest and most exceptional honors and glories, and, if I may dare so to say, honors like his own. Or does it not seem to you that he confers something like his own blessedness upon his dearest disciples, when he says, "Father, I will that, where I am, these also may be with me," and when he says again, "You also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel," and again, "As you, Father, in me, and I in you, that these also may be one in us"? All these things do not come down by lot, but are granted by the prerogative of election by him who alone sees the hearts and minds of men — who may deign to bring us also, even if not among the exceptional and the elect and those who are above the lot, yet into the lot of the saints; to whom be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).