The High Priest Wore a Device That Answered Yes or No From God

For most of Israelite history, the high priest carried a device inside his breastplate that could answer questions from God. Before going to battle, before appointing a king, before making decisions that would affect the entire nation — the high priest would be consulted, the device would respond, and the decision would be made. No one today knows exactly what it was or how it worked.

The Urim and Thummim is one of the most mysterious objects in the Hebrew Bible, and the tradition surrounding it is rich enough to fill multiple volumes.

What Do the Words Mean?

Urim and Thummim appear together in Exodus 28:30, Leviticus 8:8, Numbers 27:21, and Deuteronomy 33:8, always as a paired phrase. The words are plural: Urim is usually connected to the word for light (or) and may mean "lights"; Thummim is connected to the word for completeness or perfection (tam) and may mean "completions" or "truths." The combination is often translated "lights and perfections" or "illumination and truth."

The Babylonian Talmud (Tractate Yoma 73b, compiled c. 500 CE) states that the Urim and Thummim answered by illumination — the stones of the breastplate would light up in a sequence that an expert could read as a message. The letters of each tribe's name were inscribed on the stones, and by combining lit letters, the divine response was spelled out. But the Talmud also says that the answer had to be interpreted by someone with the Holy Spirit, because the letters could be rearranged into different words. The oracle required a trained reader as well as a responsive device.

How Was It Actually Used?

The Hebrew Bible records several consultations with the Urim and Thummim. In Numbers 27:21, Joshua was instructed to stand before Eleazar the priest, who would inquire of the Urim on his behalf before the entire community went out to war. In 1 Samuel 14, Saul consulted the oracle when trying to identify who had violated his oath. In 1 Samuel 28, it is noted that God no longer answered Saul through Urim — the oracle had gone silent. This silence was itself a message.

The Midrash Aggadah, particularly Yalkut Shimoni (compiled from earlier sources, c. 13th century CE), identifies the Urim and Thummim as one of the six things created in the twilight of the sixth day of creation — objects that existed outside the normal order of things, neither fully natural nor fully supernatural. They were built into the structure of creation itself before the regular rules were established.

Who Held the Original Urim and Thummim?

The Legends of the Jews records that the Urim and Thummim were the work of God Himself, not of human craftsmen. They were placed inside the fold of the breastplate — not sewn into it but resting loose inside, available to be drawn out and consulted. The Midrash Rabbah (Bamidbar Rabbah, c. 400–500 CE) notes that only the high priest of the Davidic line could use them effectively. A lesser person holding them would receive no illumination.

Josephus (Jewish Antiquities, c. 93 CE) reports that the Urim and Thummim ceased to function about 200 years before his own time — roughly around the second century BCE, during the Hasmonean period. The Babylonian Talmud confirms that the oracle went silent at the death of the First Temple, along with several other forms of divine communication. It is listed among the five things present in the First Temple and absent from the Second: the Ark, the fire from heaven, the divine presence, the Holy Spirit of prophecy, and the Urim and Thummim.

What Its Silence Meant

The Talmud's account of the Urim and Thummim going silent is embedded in a larger discussion about the narrowing of divine communication over time. In the earliest period, God spoke directly to patriarchs and prophets. By the Second Temple period, prophecy had ended. The Urim and Thummim silence was one marker of this transition. The Kabbalistic tradition reads the silence as a contraction — not a withdrawal of divine presence but a shift in the channel through which it communicated. Direct oracular response gave way to Torah study, rabbinic interpretation, and the accumulated wisdom of the tradition itself. Explore sacred Temple objects and their rabbinic traditions at jewishmythology.com.