Commenting on the vestments of the High Priest outlined in Exo 28:
The most mysterious part of the
vestments were two objects, the Urim and the Thummim, which went on Aaron’s
breastpiece and were used as sacred lots to discern the will of God. The judges
or kings who led the people could thus consult God’s will in difficult matters.
In Numbers 27:21, God commands that Joshua be invested with some of Moses’
authority to lead the children of Israel after him: “And he shall stand before
Eleazar the priest, who shall inquire for him by the judgment of the Urim
before the Lord; at his word they shall go out, and at his word they shall come
in.”
We see King David in 1 Samuel 23
consulting the Lord through the high priest Abiathar’s ephod, which contained
the Urim and Thummim. When David was seeking refuge from Saul in the city of
Keilah, he consulted the ephod of Abiathar as to whether Saul would besiege the
city of Keilah. On receiving a positive answer, he asked whether the men of
Keilah would then hand him over to Saul. Once again the answer was positive,
and David fled immediately from that city.
The Urim and Thummim were still
being used to discern God’s will in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. Ezra 2:63
and Nehemiah 7:65 recount an episode in which the Urim and Thummim were
consulted regarding certain men who claimed to be of priestly descent but whose
names were not found in the genealogies: “The governor told them that they were
not to partake of the most holy food [reserved for priests], until there should
be a priest to consult Urim and Thummim.”
In Acts 1, Peter used lots in a
similar way to determine God’s will for a successor to Judas. This strikes
modern ears as very strange, but it should be connected with the tradition of
the Urim and Thummim. Peter has become high priest of the New Covenant, and so
he not unnaturally took up a prerogative of the Aaronic high priest.
After Pentecost, however, lots
were never used again to determine the will of God. Prayer and the gift of
counsel, one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, fully poured out on
Pentecost, take the place of the casting of lots. The Urim and Thummim can thus
be seen as types of the gift of counsel which is given to all the confirmed
faithful in the Church through the Holy Spirit. It remains in all who are in a
state of grace, and fully blossoms in the lives of the saints. (Lawrence
Feingold, “Typology
of the Old Testament Priesthood,” [2013], pp. 6-7)
