Urim and Tummim

Ezekiel pictures Eden as a garden filled with precious stones—the same stones that adorn the high priest’s breastpiece. Across the ancient Near East, gods inhabit a world of jewel-bearing trees, gemstone mountains, and temples of lapis and gold. By wearing these stones when he enters YHWH’s sanctuary, the high priest dresses for the divine realm.

The medieval commentators, most famously Rashi, tried to describe the ephod and the choshen by reconciling the various biblical accounts. Azariah dei Rossi (ca. 1511–ca. 1578) argues that such efforts are futile; only eyewitness reports are helpful.

According to Deuteronomy, a false prophet who has no message from God, and advocates worshiping other gods, can still successfully perform miracles and predict the future.

In the Prophets, Israelite leaders such as Joshua, Saul, David, and Ahab use divination to help them make decisions, just as their ancient Near Eastern counterparts did. The Torah sidesteps the divinatory character of these objects and practices, and instead, emphasizes their ritual and religious character.

The Urim veTumim have baffled traditional commentators through the ages and only more recently has modern scholarship shed partial light on what they were.