Urim and Thummim: How God Told the Hebrews What to Do

Urim and Thummim are an enigma, both at the same time a vital central aspect of the Bible and almost willfully obscure. In a narrative where God appears regularly but only when He chooses, they seem to be a way for the Hebrews of David’s kingdom to call Him directly.

This could be useful, as the God of the Bible is not known for his willingness to talk to His creations on Earth. In the three thousand years since He got His start as a Canaanite weather deity He has been less and less overt in His interventions, to the point where lots of people question whether He is out there at all.

Of course there is a good reason for this. Our ever-increasing understanding of the universe and the sophistication with which we perceive the world around us means His hidden hand is increasingly less relevant: the more we understand, the less we need to take on faith.

But there was a time there when He was very much at the center of things. New religions tend to come from a grateful people who have been lucky in battle and conquest, and few were more blessed with luck than Joshua and the Hebrews of the Old Testament.

• The Oxus Civilization, the Kingdom that Vanished
• The Legend of Polly Bartlett, the Murderess of Slaughterhouse Gulch

Arriving as desert nomads and facing a land filled with established civilizations and peoples ruling from easily defended citadels, the Hebrews managed to carve themselves a kingdom. And as a result their God found Himself suddenly at the head of a wild success story.

However this created a problem, one which the Levitic priests of the Hebrews tied themselves into knots trying to parse. They were the ones tasked with communing with God, but the problem was He was never actually, obviously there, or at least never manifest.

The simplest solution was the one they took, as so many religions have. Build an enormous palace temple and tell the population that God is at the center of it, in the inner chamber called the “Holy of Holies” in Solomon’s Temple. 

But of course this God was also invisible, just in case anyone did break in to look for Him. When the Romans sacked Jerusalem in 70 AD the generals entered the sacred heart of the Temple, by now the second build on the site after the Babylonians trashed the first in 587 BC, and found the central chamber empty. No idols, no nothing.

So He was clearly not there at that point, but he must have been there before, as it would be very wicked of the Levites to proxy His declarations themselves. Aside from the fact that this would be blasphemy, if you let your high priest just make stuff up as the Word of God them you risk exposure whenever there was a power struggle within the priesthood.

Something was needed, something which would allow God to talk to his priests. And the Hebrews went all in for bling with their approach, with a studded semiprecious breastplate worn by the high priest and something weird and obscure which interacted with it, something they called Urim and Thumimm.

A Roll of the Dice

Descriptions do not survive of Urim and Thumimm, except in how they were consulted. The supplicant, usually a king or other high ranked individual, would put the question to the high priest, who would in turn consult Urim and Thumimm. The answer would be immediately forthcoming.

Neither do we get anything useful from the names, which mean “lights” and “truth” respectively. Very poetic, but entirely unhelpful in terms of understanding the underlying mechanism.

There are clues, however, which when taken together may allow us to shed some light on what they were and how they worked. We should begin with the special breastplate studded with gems, known as the hoshen.

This garment is named the “Breastplate of Judgement” and it is with its interaction with Urim and Thumimm that the high priest was able to talk to God and receive an answer. And we have a very clear description of how it looked.

Attached to an apron with gold chains, it consisted of twelve gems, traditional in four rows of three, which may refer to the twelve tribes of Israel as in later Rabbinic tradition. At its back was a fold or pouch and in that pouch were Urim and Thumimm.

So these special items must be small, man-portable and easily stored in the hoshen. Urim and Thumimm predate the conquest of Canaan by the Hebrews and his would fit with the needs of a nomadic people, always on the move but carrying a link to their God with them always.

The earliest reference to Urim and Thumimm comes from the Book of Hosea, perhaps the oldest text in the entire Bible. These were clearly fundamental aspects of the Hebrew faith, as they would be if they were the only way to get an answer from God.

Further clues can be found in the questions which were put to Urim and Thumimm. In Ezra 2 they are consulted to determine whether a group who claimed to be descended from Israelite priest were lying, but it is in the First Book of Samuel that we are really given insight into how they function.

In 1 Samuel 14:14 Urim and Thumimm are used to identify a sinner. To do so, the group containing the sinner is divided into two portions and Urim and Thumimm are consulted as to which subdivision contained the sinner. This is repeatedly done until the sinner is singled out.

So it is clear that Urim and Thumimm, as with Ezra, can only really answer with a “yes” or a “no” or, more generally, give an answer when presented with no more than two options. This looks an awful lot like cleromancy, the act of divination by casting lots.

If this theory is correct, them it would seem that Urim and Thumimm are two separate but similar objects which were placed in the hoshen, in its special pouch. Once in there a question would be asked (the original phrase in Samuel is inquired of God) and the answer would depend on which of the two was drawn from the pouch.

It would seem that the God of the Hebrew Bible did like to play at dice, or at least his answer while definitely not being made up by the high priest, was perhaps little more than random chance.

This is all supposition, of course, and other theories exist. Some believe that Urim and Thumimm would be placed in the pouch to connect the assembled priests to God, and them his answer would come from some kind of external sign to confirm the answer.

The fact is we will never know. The hoshen is lost, along with Urim and Thumimm. Whatever means modern Hebrews use to talk to the God of the Old Testament, it is not through the lights and the truth.

Header Image: The high priest with his hoshen, in which was kept the Urim and Thumimm, in this detail from David and Saul by Camillo Procaccini. Source: Camillo Procaccini / Public Domain.