Nahum 3:10
Yet was she carried away, she went into captivity: her young children also were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets: and they cast lots for her honourable men, and all her great men were bound in chains. Yet was she carried away, she went into captivity: her young children also were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets: and they cast lots for her honourable men, and all her great men were bound in chains.
Nahum chapters 2 and 3 predict the fall of Nineveh and Assyria, and this verse belongs to that prophecy as a description of the defeat and captivity that came upon the city. That predicted fall was fulfilled when Assyria yielded to the united and superior power of Media, Egypt, and Babylonia, her former dependencies. That defeat ended Assyrian rule and opened the way for Babylon under Nabopolassar to rise from vassalage to proud Nineveh into ascendancy.
The defeat described was total: the people were carried away into captivity, her young children were dashed in pieces at the top of the streets and killed, lots were cast for her honourable and leading men as spoil, and all her great men were bound in chains and shackled. The same description is of the defeat of No-amon, which was taken captive, its children killed, its leading men allotted among the conquerors, and its great men put in chains. The word translated lot is the Hebrew goh-rah-l, the same word found in Daniel 12:13.
Lot here means that by which a person's fate or portion is determined by casting lots, the determination of Providence. The verse uses it for the casting of lots for the city's honourable men to decide their fate when it fell into captivity, with lots cast for its honored men who were then bound in chains. It is thus an example of lot meaning the means by which a person's fate is determined, not an inheritance portion.