Chance

The concept of chance in Scripture is consistently subordinated to divine providence. In Luke 10:31, the Good Samaritan parable begins with the statement that by chance a certain priest came down that road — but the context implies that nothing in the story operates outside God's purposes. The apparent randomness of the Ark of the Covenant returning to Israelite territory (1 Sam. 6:9) is similarly interpreted as a test of whether it was truly God who struck Israel, and Ecclesiastes 9:11 acknowledges that time and chance happen to them all without endorsing a deistic view of random events. Biblical theology consistently holds that what appears as chance from a human perspective operates within the framework of divine sovereignty.