longer odds

Week 11  Joshua 15

The last section of the chapter in my bible is titled “The Towns Judah Inherited”. It’s 43-verses long – name after name after name.
To give myself a mental focus I decided to look for Bethlehem. But I couldn’t find it! (I don’t think I missed it. I don’t think it’s there.)
Anyway the reason I was interested was because a couple of years ago I posted on a prophecy Micah made about the town: but you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.
At that time I wondered what the odds were of Micah guessing correctly that the ‘Ruler’ would come from Bethlehem so I found a bible map and counted roughly 55 towns & villages in Judah (that meant Micah had 1-in-55 chances of guessing the correct town).
But looking at Joshua 15 today I count about 112 towns listed. So Micah’s odds of guessing correctly just got quite a bit worse. (I realize that in the interval between Joshua & Micah some towns might have disappeared and new ones might have developed. So 112 isn’t exact.) My only point is that my estimate a couple of years ago was likely wrong. Which made Micah’s odds of guessing wrong even bigger (I calculated his odds-probability. He had a 99% chance of guessing wrong).

Note: quote from Micah 5:2 (NIV). See post: ‘longshot’ September 3 2021